that the crown is the _source_ of
power, and that a more vigorous administration of its prerogative is
required.

There are other points commented upon in his lordship's Report, which
claim earnest consideration: one is, that of the propriety of municipal
institutions. Local improvements, when left in the hands of
representative assemblies, are seldom judicious or impartial, and should
therefore be made over either to the inhabitants or executive. The
system of townships has certainly been one great cause of the prosperity
of the United States, each township taxing itself for its own
improvement. Although the great roads extending through the whole of
the Union are in the hands of the Federal Government, and the States
Government take up the improvement on an extensive scale in the States
themselves, the townships, knowing exactly what they require, tax
themselves for their minor advantages. The system in England is much
the same, although perhaps not so well regulated as in America. Are
not, however, municipal institutions valuable in another point of view?
Do they not prepare the people for legislating? are they not the
rudiments of legislation by which a free people learn to tax themselves?
And indeed, it may also be asked, would not the petty influence and
authority confided to those who are ambitious by their townsmen satisfy
their ambition, and prevent them from becoming demagogues and disturbing
the country?

Whatever may be the future arrangements for ruling these provinces, it
appears to me that there are two great evils in the present system; one
is, that the governors of the provinces have not sufficient
discretionary power, and the other, that they are so often removed. The
evils arising from the first cause have been pointed out in Lord
Durham's Report:--

"The complete and unavoidable ignorance in which the British public, and
even the great body of its legislators, are with respect to the real
interests of distant communities, so entirely different from their own,
produces a general indifference, which nothing but so me great colonial
crisis ever dispels; and responsibility to Parliament, or to the public
opinion of Great Britain, would, except on these great and rare
occasions, be positively mischievous, if it were not impossible. The
repeated changes caused by political events at home having no connexion
with colonial affairs, have left, to most of the various representatives
of the Colonial