te in their demands and attached to
British institutions; but they have been oppressed by a miserable
little oligarchy on the one hand and excited by a few factious
demagogues on the other. I can make a middle reforming party, I am
sure, that will put down both.' The record of seventy-five years and
of two wars shows the attachment of the Canadians to British
institutions, and how justly the governor-general appraised the 'mass
of the people.' Not less clearly did he judge the politicians of the
day, their pettiness, their naive selfishness, their disregard of rule
and form, shocking all the instincts of the British man of business and
{49} the trained parliamentary hand. 'You can form no idea,' he
continues, 'of the way a Colonial Parliament transacts its business. I
got them into comparative order and decency by having measures brought
forward by the Government and well and steadily worked through. But
when they came to their own affairs, and, above all, to money matters,
there was a scene of confusion and riot of which no one in England can
have any idea. Every man proposes a vote for his own job; and bills
are introduced without notice and carried through _all_ their stages in
a quarter of an hour! One of the greatest advantages of the Union will
be that it will be possible to introduce a new system of legislating,
and above all, a restriction upon the initiation of money-votes.
Without the last I would not give a farthing for my bill: and the
change would be decidedly popular; for the members all complain that
under the present system they cannot refuse to move a job for any
constituent who desires it.' Canadians of the present day should study
those words without flinching.

When the session was over Thomson posted back to Montreal, assembled
his Special Council, and set to work, in the role of {50} benevolent
despot, introducing many much-needed reforms. The wheels of government
had been definitely blocked by racial hatred; the constitution was
still suspended. 'There is positively no machinery of government,'
Thomson wrote in a private letter. 'Everything is to be done by the
governor and his secretary.' There were no heads of departments
accessible. When a vacancy occurred, the practice was to appoint two
men to fill it, one French and the other English. There were joint
sheriffs, and joint crown surveyors, who worked against each other.
Ably seconded by the chief justice Stuart, the energetic go