ial of John Anderson, late Janitor of
Queen's College_, p. 26.

[59] Sir Charles Bagot to Lord Stanley, 26 September, 1842.

[60] Bagot Correspondence: Cartwright to Bagot, 16 May, 1842.

[61] Arthur to Normanby, 2 July, 1839.

[62] Lord Sydenham to Lord John Russell, 23 February, 1841.

[63] Elgin-Grey Correspondence: W. L. Mackenzie to Major Campbell, 14
February, 1848.

[64] Hincks, _Reminiscences_, p. 15.

[65] Poulett Scrope, _Life of Lord Sydenham_, p. 165.

[66] See, for example, a despatch--Metcalfe to Stanley, 24 June,
1843--descriptive of troubles on the Beauharnois Canal.

[67] A bill of 1833, _penes me_.

[68] Metcalfe to Stanley, 23 December, 1843.

{70}

CHAPTER III.

THE GOVERNORS-GENERAL: LORD SYDENHAM.

Between 1839 and 1854, four governors-general exercised authority over
Canada, the Right Honourable Charles Poulett Thomson, later Lord
Sydenham, Sir Charles Bagot, Charles, Lord Metcalfe, and the Earl of
Elgin.[1] Their statesmanship, their errors, the accidents which
modified their policies, and the influence of their decisions and
despatches on British cabinets, constitute on the whole the most
important factor in the creation of the modern Canadian theory of
government. In consequence, their conduct with reference to colonial
autonomy and all the questions therewith connected, demands the most
careful and detailed treatment.

When Lord John Russell, then leader of the House of Commons, and
Secretary of State for the {71} Colonies, selected a new
governor-general of Canada to complete the work begun by Durham, he
entrusted to him an elaborate system of government, most of it
experimental and as yet untried. He was to superintend the completion
of that Union between Upper and Lower Canada, which Durham had so
strenuously advocated; and the Union was to be the centre of a general
administrative reconstruction. The programme outlined in Russell's
instructions proposed "a legislative union of the two provinces, a just
regard to the claims of either province in adjusting the terms of that
union, the maintenance of the three Estates of the Provincial
Legislature, the settlement of a permanent Civil List for securing the
independence of the judges, and, to the executive government, that
freedom of action which is necessary for the public good, and the
establishment of a system of local government by representative bodies,
freely elected in the various cities and rural districts.