morganatic marriage of King
William IV. Could such a man carry through a compromise, by which men of
opposite views should sit in his Cabinet? In Canada it had taken all the
skill and political experience of Lord Sydenham; under Sir Charles
Metcalfe the new wine burst the old bottles, bespattering more than one
reputation in the process. That the new governor would soon take offence
at the jovial, self-confident, free manners of Howe was almost certain.

The new Executive Council was a compromise. Prime minister there was
none. Its head was still the governor, whom Howe himself admitted to be
'still responsible only to his sovereign.' On the question which in
Canada brought about the quarrel between Sir Charles Metcalfe and his
advisers, Howe said in 1840 that in Nova Scotia 'the patronage of the
country is at his [the governor's] disposal to aid him in carrying on the
government.' In 1841 he still accorded him the initiative, saying that
'the governor, as the Queen's representative, still dispenses the
patronage, but that as the Council are bound to defend his appointments,
the responsibility even as regards appointments is nearly as great in the
one case as in the other.'

{72}

During these years Howe had a delicate role to play. The extreme and
logical members of his own party attacked him as a trimmer; on the other
hand, any one of the four extruded councillors was considered by Society
to be worth a hundred Howes, and Society was not slow to make its
feelings known. The fight was fiercest in the Executive Council, where
the party of caution, if not of reaction, was led by the Hon. J. W.
Johnston. Tall and distinguished in appearance, with dark flashing eyes
and imperious temper, of fine probity in his private life, and with a
keen, though somewhat lawyer-like, intellect, Johnston was no unworthy
antagonist to the great tribune of the people. Though of good birth, and
recognized in Society as Howe was not, he was a Baptist, and so not
hampered in the popular mind by any connection with the official Church.
Nor were his views on government illiberal. The controversy between him
and Howe was rather of temperament than of principles, between the keen
lawyer, mistrustful of spontaneity, lingering fondly over his precedents,
and the impulsive, over-trustful, over-generous lover of humanity. In
the working out of the new system anomalies soon developed, which
Falkland {73} was not the man to minimize. Ho