ell understood rules, so as
to ensure a correct expression of public opinion on all important
issues. The committees which assist in governing this country are the
choice of the people's representatives assembled in parliament, and
every four or five years and sometimes even sooner in case of a
crisis, the people have to decide on the wisdom of the choice.

The system has assuredly its drawbacks like all systems of government
that have been devised and worked out by the brain of man. In all
frankness I confess that this review would be incomplete were I not to
refer to certain features of the Canadian system of government which
seem to me on the surface fraught with inherent danger at some time or
other to independent legislative judgment. Any one who has closely
watched the evolution of this system for years past must admit that
there is a dangerous tendency in the Dominion to give the executive--I
mean the ministry as a body--too superior a control over the
legislative authority. When a ministry has in its gift the appointment
not only of the heads of the executive government in the provinces,
that is to say, of the lieutenant-governors, who can be dismissed by
the same power at any moment, but also of the members of the Upper
House of Parliament itself, besides the judiciary and numerous
collectorships and other valuable offices, it is quite obvious that
the element of human ambition and selfishness has abundant room for
operation on the floor of the legislature, and a bold and skilful
cabinet is also able to wield a machinery very potent under a system
of party government. In this respect the House of Representatives may
be less liable to insidious influences than a House of Commons at
critical junctures when individual conscience or independent judgment
appears on the point of asserting itself. The House of Commons may be
made by skilful party management a mere recording or registering body
of an able and determined cabinet. I see less liability to such silent
though potent influences in a system which makes the president and a
house of representatives to a large degree independent of each other,
and leaves his important nominations to office under the control of
the senate, a body which has no analogy whatever with the relatively
weak branch of the Canadian parliament, essentially weak while its
membership depends on the government itself. I admit at once that in
the financial dependence of the provinces on the ce