y
on Friday, the 10th of April. It was a truly formidable indictment. It
recapitulated the various grievances under which the Province laboured,
and which called loudly for remedy. These have been already set forth in
former chapters of the present work, and need not here be enlarged upon.
The prevailing tone of the Report was temperate and calm, and there is
little or nothing in it to which serious exception can be taken,
although, as may easily be discerned from internal evidence, the
compilers felt strongly the importance of a vivid presentation of their
case. The Report proper occupies only fifteen folio pages of the
appendix to the official journals of the session; but the evidence taken
by the Committee, and the various letters, papers and documents which go
to make up the mass of valuable information submitted to the Assembly,
extend to voluminous dimensions. In addition to the copies printed for
insertion in the appendix to the journal, two thousand copies of the
complete work were issued separately in octavo form for distribution. It
thus obtained a considerable circulation throughout the Province; and a
copy was also sent to each member of the British House of Commons. The
first copy that left the binder's hands was forwarded to the Colonial
Secretary. All the most pressing grievances were dealt with in greater
or less detail, but special prominence was given to the necessity for a
responsible Government--a Government responsible to public opinion,
which must cease to exist when it ceases to command popular confidence.
The wished-for settlement of this important question would necessarily
comprehend and include the removal of many of the most glaring abuses to
which the people of the Province had long been subject and the Reform
party were keenly alive to the importance of obtaining the concession.
More than a third of the Report proper was devoted to dealing with the
question in its various aspects, and it was shown that the Provincial
Executive were not only impervious to public opinion, but were also
ready enough to disregard the views of the Home Government itself when
those views failed to coincide with their own plans for
self-aggrandizement. Some of the evidence taken was of the most
compromising character, while the refusal of leading members of the
Compact to answer certain questions propounded to them did not tend to
place matters in a more favourable light. Archdeacon Strachan's response
to many of t