ngs of Durham
and Buller, Stanley was aiming at restoring all the ancient
landmarks--an unpopular executive, a small privileged party "of the
connexion," and a colony quickly and surely passing from the control of
Britain. Even after Stanley's resignation, and the accession of an
avowed Peelite and free-trader, Gladstone, to his office, the change in
commercial theory did not at first effect any change in the Colonial
Office interpretation of the Canadian constitution. No doubt Gladstone
recommended Cathcart to ascertain the deliberate sense of the Canadian
community at large, and pay respect to the House of Assembly as the
organ of that sense, but he committed himself and the new
governor-general to a strong support of Metcalfe's system, and put him
on his guard against "dishonourable abstract declarations on the
subject of what has been termed responsible government."[27]

It would be tedious to follow the subject into every detail of Canadian
administration; but all {252} existing evidence tends to prove that the
representative men of the British Tory party opposed the new
interpretation of Canadian rights at every crisis in the period. In
the Rebellion Losses debate in 1849, Gladstone, taking in this matter a
view more restricted than that of his leader Peel, held that Elgin
should have referred to the Home Government at the very first moment,
and before public opinion had been appealed to in the colony.[28] The
fall of the Whig ministry in 1851 was followed by the first of three
brief Derby administrations: and the Earl of Derby proved himself to be
more wedded than he had been as Lord Stanley to the old restrictive
system. The Clergy Reserve dispute was nearing its end, but Derby and
Sir John Pakington, his colonial secretary, intervened to introduce one
last delay, and to give the Bishop of Toronto his last gleam of hope.
The appointment of Pakington, which, according to Taylor, was treated
with very general ridicule, was in itself significant: even an ignorant
and retrograde politician was adequate for his task when that task was
obstruction. After the short-lived Derby administration was over,
Pakington continued his defence of Anglican rights in Canada, and
although {253} Canadian opinion had declared itself overwhelmingly on
the other side, he refused to admit that "the argument of
self-government was so paramount that it ought to over-rule the sacred
dedication of this property."

So far nothing unex