"[2] In
attaining these ends, all of them obviously to the advantage of the
colony, the Colonial Secretary desired to consult, and, as far as
possible, to defer to Canadian public opinion.[3]

{72}

Nevertheless, Lord John Russell had no sooner entered upon his
administrative reforms, than he found himself face to face with a
fundamental constitutional difficulty. He proposed to play the part of
a reformer in Canada; but the majority of reformers in that province
added to his programme the demand for executive councils, not merely
sympathetic to popular claims, but responsible to the representatives
of the people in a Canadian Parliament. Now according to all the
traditions of imperial government a demand so far-reaching involved the
disruption of the empire, and ended the connection between Canada and
England. To this general objection the British minister added a
subtler point in constitutional law. To yield to colonial reforming
ideas would be to contradict the existing conventions of the
constitution. "The power for which a minister is responsible in
England," he wrote to his new governor, "is not his own power, but the
power of the crown, of which he is for the time the organ. It is
obvious that the executive councillor of a colony is in a situation
totally different.... Can the colonial council be the advisers of the
crown of England? Evidently not, for the crown has other advisers for
the same functions, and with {73} superior authority. It may happen,
therefore, that the governor receives, at one and the same time,
instructions from the Queen and advice from his executive council
totally at variance with each other. If he is to obey his instructions
from England, the parallel of constitutional responsibility entirely
fails; if, on the other hand, he is to follow the advice of his
council, he is no longer a subordinate officer, but an independent
sovereign."[4] The governor-general, then, was in no way to concede to
the Canadian assembly a responsibility and power which resided only in
the British ministry.

At the same time large concessions, in spirit if not in letter, helped
to modify the rigour of this constitutional doctrine. "I have not
drawn any specific line," Russell wrote at the end of the despatch
already quoted, "beyond which the power of the governor on the one
hand, and the privileges of the assembly on the other, ought not to
extend.... The governor must only oppose the wishes of