the complete surrender of executive to
legislature. Attempts had been made to gain some countervailing powers
by bargain; but, in Canada, the civil list had now been surrendered to
local control, the endowment of the Church of England was practically
at an end, patronage was in the hands of the provincial ministry, and
all the exceptions which the central authority had claimed as essential
to its continued existence followed in the wake of the lost executive
supremacy. Neither Whigs nor Tories quite understood how an Empire was
possible, in which there was no definite federating principle; or, if
there {280} were, where the federating principle existed only to be
neutralized as, one by one, the restrictions imposed by it were felt by
the colonists to be annoying to their sense of freedom. Empire on
these terms seemed to mean simply a capacity in the mother country for
indefinite surrender. The accomplishment of the purpose proclaimed by
Durham, Russell, and Grey, would, to a Tory even less peremptory than
the Duke of Wellington, mean the end of the connection; and as they
felt, so they spoke and acted. They were separatists, not of
good-will, but from necessity and the nature of things.

Among the Whigs, an even more important process was at work. By 1850
the disintegration of the Whig party was already far advanced.
Finality in reform had already been found impossible, and Russell and
the advanced men were slowly drawing ahead of conservatives like
Melbourne and Palmerston. After 1846, the liberalizing power of Peel's
steady scientific intelligence was at work, transforming the ideas of
his allies, as he had formerly shattered those of his old friends, and,
of Peel's followers, Gladstone at least seemed to be looking in the
same direction as his master--towards administrative liberalism. The
{281} Whig creed and programme were in the melting pot. Now, what made
the final product not Whig, but Liberal, was on the whole the
increasing influence of the parliamentary Radicals; and in colonial
matters the Radicals, who told on the revived and quickened Whig party,
were pronouncedly in favour of separation. It is too often assumed
that the imperial creed of Durham and Buller was shared in by their
fellow Radicals. That is a grave mistake. One may trace a descent
towards separatism from Molesworth to Roebuck and Brougham. In
Molesworth, the tendency was comparatively slight. No doubt in 1837,
under the stress o