will. But he came at a
decisive moment in Canadian history; his tenure of the Colonial Office
coincided with the period in which Durham's Report exercised its
greatest influence, and Russell, who had the politician's faculty for
flinging himself with all his force into the issue dominating the
present, inaugurated what proved to be a new regime in colonial
administration.

In attributing so decisive a part to Russell's work at the Colonial
Office, one need not estimate very highly his powers of initiative or
imagination. It was Lord John Russell's lot, here as in Parliamentary
Reform, to read with honest eyes the defects of the existing system, to
initiate a great and useful change, and then to predicate finality
{260} of an act, which was really only the beginning of greater
changes. But in Canadian politics as in British, he must be credited
with being better than his words, and with doing nothing to hinder a
movement which he only partially understood.

His ideas have in part been criticized in relation to Lord Sydenham's
governor-generalship: in a sense, Sydenham was simply the Russell
system incarnate. But it is well to examine these ideas as a whole.
Russell was a Durhamite "with a difference." Like Durham he planned a
generous measure of self-government, but he was a stricter
constitutional thinker than Durham. He reduced to a far finer point
the difficulty which Durham only slightly felt, about the seat of
ultimate authority and responsibility; and his instructions to Sydenham
left no doubt as to the constitutional superior in Canada. With
infinitely shrewder practical insight than his prompter, he refused to
simplify the problem of executive responsibility, by making the council
subject to the Assembly in purely domestic matters, and to the Crown
and its representative in external matters. "Supposing," he said,
"that you could lay down this broad principle, and say that all
external matters {261} should be subject to the home government, and
all internal matters should be governed according to the majority of
the Assembly, could you carry that principle into effect? I say, we
cannot abandon the responsibility which is cast upon us as Ministers of
the Executive of this great Empire."[34] Ultimately the surrender had
to be made, but it was well that Russell should have refused to consent
to what was really a fallacy in Durham's reasoning. In consequence of
this position, the Whig leader regarded Bago