ere too little sympathetic towards each other's
methods and ideas, and Gladstone too strongly fortified in his own
opinions, for Stephen's influence to creep in; while the Whig
government which entered as he left the Colonial Office, had, {237} in
Grey, a Secretary of State too learned in the affairs of his department
to reflect the last influences of his retiring under-secretary.
Whatever, then, Mr. Over-Secretary Stephen did to dominate Lord
Glenelg, and to initiate the concession of responsible government to
Canada, his influence must speedily have sunk to a very secondary
position, and the independent and conscious intentions of the
responsible ministers held complete sway. It is interesting to note
that, according to his son, he seems to have come to share "the
opinions prevalent among the liberal party that the colonies would soon
be detached from the mother-country."[8]

The actual starting-point of the development of British opinion with
regard to Canadian institutions is perfectly definite. It dates from
the co-operation and mutual influence of a little group of experts in
colonial matters, of whom Charles Buller and Gibbon Wakefield were the
moving spirits, and the Earl of Durham the illustrious mouthpiece. The
end of the Rebellion furnished the occasion for their propaganda.

The situation was one peculiarly susceptible to {238} the treatment
likely to be proposed by these radical and unconventional spirits. It
was difficult to describe the constitutional position of Canada without
establishing a contradiction in terms, and neither abstract and logical
minds like that of Cornewall Lewis, nor bureaucratic intelligences like
Stephen's, could do more than intensify the difficulty and emphasize
it. The _deus ex machina_ must appear and solve the preliminary or
theoretic difficulties by overriding them. There are some who describe
the pioneers of Canadian self-government as philosophic radicals; but
they were really not of that school. It was through the absence of any
philosophy or rigid logic that they succeeded.

Foremost in the group came Edward Gibbon Wakefield, one of those
erratic but creative spirits whose errors are often as profitable to
all (save themselves) as their sober acts. It is not here necessary to
enter on the details of his emigration system; in that he was, after
all, a pioneer in the south and east rather than in the west. But in
the stirring years of colonial development, in whic