lete dependence upon the official party and its
friends."

It has been the fashion with most writers on our early history to
represent the Executive Council as an arbitrary creation of the early
Lieutenant-Governors: as an arrangement sanctioned by the Imperial
authorities, but not authorized by the Provincial constitution. Such
writers cannot have read the debates which took place in the House of
Commons while the Constitutional Act of 1791 was under discussion there.
Nay, they cannot have read the Act itself with much care. Nothing is
more certain than that the framers of that statute contemplated the
creation of an Executive Council. By reference to the seventh,
thirty-fourth and thirty-eighth clauses it will be seen that the
Executive Council is definitely mentioned by name, and that the
appointment of such a body is assumed, and treated as a matter of
course. But that the Council should occupy the same relative position as
in Great Britain, and that it should be amenable to public opinion as
expressed by the vote of the House of Assembly, does not appear to have
been clearly understood. Indeed, with the exception of a few master
minds, such as Pitt, Fox, and Burke, but little interest seems to have
been taken by British legislators in this important colonial experiment.
Parliamentary Government, though it had been long established in
England, had not then been reduced to a science. Even such clear-sighted
statesmen as Pitt and Fox were blind to facts which at the present day
force themselves upon the attention of every student of constitutional
history. What wonder, then, that there should have been defects in the
measure of 1791? What wonder that even eminent statesmen should have
attempted to square the circle in politics by introducing such an
incongruity as representative institutions without Executive
responsibility? Power was given to the popular branch of the Legislature
to pass measures for the public good. But, no matter how overwhelming
might be the majorities whereby such measures were passed, there was no
obligation on the other branches of the Legislature to accept or act
upon them. In the words of one of our own writers: "the Legislative
Councils, nominated by the Crown, held the Legislative Assemblies by the
throat, kept them prostrate, and paralyzed them."[29] As for the members
of the Executive Council, they were to all intents and purposes
independent of public opinion, and could override a unanim