the Council, especially in those colonies in which
the Executive and Legislative Councils are distinct bodies."[5]

{76}

The importance of this general circular of October 16th is that, at a
time when the Colonial Secretary was exhorting the new governor-general
to part with none of his prerogatives, and in a colony where public
opinion was importuning with some persistence for a more popular
executive, one of the best excuses for withholding from the people
their desires was removed. The representative of the crown in
consequence found himself with a new and not altogether comfortable
opportunity for exercising his freedom of choice.

It fell to Charles Poulett Thomson, President of the Board of Trade in
the Whig ministry, to carry out the Union of the two Canadian
provinces, and to administer them in accordance with this doctrine of
modified autonomy. The choice of the government seemed both wise and
foolish. Poulett Thomson had had an admirable training for the work.
In a colony where trade and commerce were almost everything, he brought
not Durham's aristocratic detachment but a real knowledge of commerce,
since his was a great mercantile family. In Parliament, he had become
a specialist in the financial and economic issues, which had already
displaced the diplomatic or purely political questions of the last
generation. {77} His speeches on the revision of taxes, the corn laws,
and British foreign trade, proved that, in a utilitarian age, he knew
the science of utilities and had freed himself from bureaucratic red
tape. His parliamentary career too had taught him the secret of the
management of assemblies, and Canada would under him be spared the
friction which the rigid attitude of soldiers, trained in the school of
Wellington, had been causing throughout the British colonies for many
years.

There were, however, many who doubted whether the man had a character
and will powerful enough to dominate the turbulent forces of Canadian
politics. Physically he was far from strong, and almost the first
comment made by Canadians on him was that their new governor-general
came to them a valetudinarian. There seemed to be other and more
serious elements of weakness. Charles Greville spoke of him with just
a tinge of good-natured contempt as "very good humoured, pleasing and
intelligent, but the greatest coxcomb I ever saw, and the vainest dog,
though his vanity is not offensive or arrogant";[6] and a writer in