sive scheme of improved administration. The very phrase which has now become the motto of a great association sprang from him. In his speech of December, 1852, he first gave ministerial embodiment to the growing, but then not formidable, movement for government by merit, and the proper exercise of patronage. Others carried out his views in part, but sufficient yet remains of his plan unadopted to form a distinctive feature of Conservative policy; and, knowing this to be the case Mr. Disraeli in his oration during the Layard debate pledged the party of which he is a brilliant member to a thorough departmental reformation. To that extent the Whigs will not, cannot go. They are bound by too many ties. Their political existence is too abnormal. As a body they are composed of heterogeneous materials, cohering badly. But the Conservatives are a compact power; and if they be in a minority in the present parliament, are rendered so by coalitions without principle or any elements of continuance. In adhering rationally and practically to administrative reform we give a really valuable pledge which should satisfy the nation at large, sealed as it is by the efforts about being put forth when a disgraceful faction expelled Lord Derby from office. Mr. Disraeli with singular wisdom enunciated broadly, on the occasion to which we refer, the views of his party, and their determination, should they occupy the Treasury benches before the so-much desiderated changes are effected. What could be more pointed, vigorous, or definite than the following declaration ?

I

"I am of opinion that the entrance into that service should not be by mere favouritism. I think it should be the subject of a substantial and real test of fitness, and I think the idea of a substantial and real test of fitness is not illusory, but essentially practical. I think, in the second place, that the rewards of our public civil servants should be on a higher scale. think that the result of the change will be public economy, and not increased expenditure. I think that the reward of the public servants should not be merely of a fixed nature, but that they should be trained to look upon other and more spiritual rewards which animate and ennoble the conduct of men. I am also of opinion that the civil service of the country ought to be made, and must be made, strictly and completely professional,

and the great offices of the State should be reserved for public servants who have been trained and educated in the permanent civil service. These are what I think sound and judicious changes. They are changes of administrative reform. They are changes which I think every Government ought to adopt and carry out, and nothing short of this ought to satisfy the house."

But to the announcements of the Opposition, and the demands of the London Tavern Reformers, the Ministry reply with smooth speeches of approval, and certain acts bearing resemblance to those required of them. Whether they are sufficient is the question. The Whig Chancellor of the Exchequer tells us that finality has been reached in the career of administrative reform! Now what has actually been done ? Are the Orders in Council the germ of real changes for the better? They have a value, but it is slight. They leave the patronage still in the hands of persons who will use it for no good purpose, and that is their cardinal defect. merits we need not dwell; their insufOn their ficiency is apparent. The alterations in the Ordnance were not complete reforms. They extend about halfway, and there stop suddenly. even in carrying them out the vacancies created by changes or the formation of new offices, have been filled upon precisely the old system of advancing the cousin of this minister, and the recommended of another, in the room of the deserving. It is very plain that even in the depth of their professions, and in those very matters in which they claim a virtue, the Palmerston Cabinet have been weighed and found wanting. The task they have pretended to begin must be assumed by others, and the real Reformers, who will proceed cautiously and honestly, in agreement with our tried constitution, and the genius of our institutions, will neither be found in Chesham-place nor at Drury-lane.

And

There can be no doubt, however, that with all his imbecility and dilatoriness Lord Palmerston has for the nonce tided over his political troubles. For that he has to thank his good fortune more than his judgment or discretion. The nation has become sanguine again since the Allies entered the Sea of Azoff and enclosed the Crimea almost at every point since the army before Sebastopol took the

greatest of the Russian positions with unparalleled gallantry, despite immense difficulties. But for these successes the Ministry can properly take no credit to themselves. They are believed to have sprung from the decision of the French general; and whether this be so or not, are undeniably owing in the main to the vigour of his counsels and the prowess of our arms. These prosperities have, indeed, saved the Ministry; but how long will their influence continue? The first depression of the public mind will tell upon the Cabinet, and perchance lead to its dissolution. A party which has conducted the war feebly; which has shown an inability to deal with the great question of the day; which exists only by a balancing of classes and a cleverness in political strategics; which has wavered, to say the least, in reference to the conditions of a safe and honourable peace; which has alternately coquetted with and repelled the Cobden and Gladstone coteries; which has perpetuated the radical error of the last fatal Ministry, by neglecting to provide a reserve; which has offered the bait of a landed settlement in Canada to foreign legionaries, while the British recruit has no inducement beyond the bounty, and the British veteran no reward save his pension; which has promised to put "the right men in the right places," and invariably filled them with the wrong men; —a party of this character cannot remain long in possession of power, inasmuch as it must speedily lose-if it have not already lost the sympathy of every class in the country.

The present crisis offers a noble opportunity to a statesman of extensive genius, power of organisation, and energy of character. The country is depressed; a great war has been mismanaged; internal ameliorations are demanded; many home questions of gravest import lie before us for settleinent; the people suffer from heavy

burdens-taxation has all but reached its limit; everything is wrong. The entire machine is out of gearing. It needs the touches of a master-hand. Who ambitions the distinction of bringing peace and happiness, prosperity and content, order and good government, out of this confusion and dissatisfaction? It is a noble object of desire for a great mind. Who is ready? We believe some one will appear, and assuredly, be he an old leader or a new one, in agreement with an existing party or not, a peer or a merchant, the country will back him heartily, and give him every opportunity of earning a brilliant success. The Minister who restores the country to its old prestige, and arranges all its interests with honour, so as to lay the foundation of another half-century of peace fruitful of progress as the last, will deserve and receive from a grateful people an immortality in their history.

As we have commenced these discursive but earnest observations, so we end them, entreating every politician having an honest desire to see his country once more at the head of European nations to lend his aid only to that Government, heedless of its mere party hue, which shall conduct the war with vigour, so as to humble Russia, give lasting peace to Turkey and the continental states, and restore again to their proper place among our national interests, all the arts of industrial and the movements of social progression. He who accomplishes this will write his name in our hearts, to be bequeathed with fervor to our children. But where is this statesman of comprehensive mind this other Chatham-this hero of the age?—

"Quem vocet Divâm populus ruentis
Imperi rebus ?"

We believe the man will yet appear to pilot us to a safe haven; but assuredly he is not at this moment holding the helm.

We took an opportunity lately of tracing out the origin and character of some remarkable circumstances of the birth and early breeding of that great nation, first-born of the AngloSaxon stock, whose precocity of growth, combined as it is so far apparent with strength and constitutional vigour, is a standing miracle in the eyes of politicians. The marvel must, we venture to think, be lessened by a full consideration of the nature of the incidents to which we then called attention, and by the proofs they afford that the constitution of the United States was no new invention or product of accident, but a wise and cautious adaptation of the machinery of the republican monarchy of England to the service of the common principle of regulated liberty in the monarchical republic of America. The composite link of filial obedience and parental love was broken; yet, although the daughter moved off to do for herself in the world, in the new establishment no rule of the old family was forgotten, no custom of the early home was left unobserved. But, however worthy of consideration the early national infancy of the United States may be, a still warmer interest must surely be felt by us in the passing history of the lusty youth of that other swarm of the Anglo-Saxon race which has hived itself upon the American continent. To an Englishman - we can find no more catholic name for the inhabitants of the kingdoms that form the metropolis of our empire-the obligations of fellow-citizenship, added to close relationship of blood, naturally cause the welfare of the British American provinces to appear of high importance; while the peculiar circumstances of the

VOL. XLVI.-NO. CCLXXII,

IN CANADA.

chief among them can scarcely fail to attract the attention of the political inquirer, whose basis of comparison is the British Constitution. We have before our eyes in Canada the test of an experimentum crucis in course of application to constitutional government, upon the English model; and the social and civil peculiarities of that great colony render its history, during the short period that has elapsed since it became a dependency of the English crown, a most valuable course of practical instruction in politics. It is not our present intention to pursue this interesting subject, but rather to point to the result that has already followed upon the establishment of free institutions, and to illustrate their working by a notable example. Nevertheless, a word or two will be well bestowed in calling to the recollection of our readers the special difficulties that stood in the way of the plantation of the British Constitution upon the banks of the St. Lawrence. They were, in truth, harder to be overcome than the obstacle of arms which opposed reformatory revolution in the neighbouring colonies, nor are they yet, perhaps, completely passed by.

It is but ninety-six years since Wolfe mounted the heights of Abraham; four years before Canada was formally ceded to England by the Treaty of Paris in 1763. The colonial population was then exclusively French, who were settled, in number about 70,000, in the lower province. They were governed by military authority the tenure of land, and civil relations being regulated in accordance with the French feudal law and the system called the custom of Paris. The land was held in large tracts, under grants from

B

the Crown, by seigneurs or lords of manors, who were bound to sub-grant specified portions to censitaires, or tenants, who were in turn required to render certain services and tributes to their lords. Under this system, which had endured for a hundred and fifty years, a copy of the rural society of France, as it existed in the seventeenth century, was produced and maintained in the original simplicity of its most amiable features, and scarcely disturbed by the spirit of progress, whether for good or evil. The seigneurs were stately, gallant, and polite; the habitans, or peasants, frugal and industrious all were hospitable, courteous, honest, and ignorant. Together they formed a community cheerful and happy, but in a remarkable degree tenacious of old customs, and averse to change of place or habits.

For

eleven years after the cession, Canada was governed as a Crown colony by an English governor and council, according to English law, administered in the English language only. In the year 1774, when the troubles in the adjoining colonies warned the home Government of the prudence of securing friends among the provincialists, a legislative council was given to Canada, the French law was again established in all civil matters, and the use of the French language was resumed in the law courts and in public transactions. The American revolution caused a great change in the Canadian population: a large influx of people of the Anglo-Saxon race, American loyalists, took place, and these being reinforced by emigration from the United King. dom, chiefly of Scotch and Irish, an English nation altogether distinct from the Nation Canadienne was speedily formed. The spirit of industry and progress, and the desire for self-government entered along with the new comers, who settled chiefly in the upper or western districts, which the original colonists had never attempted to occupy. The privileges of a free British colony were, of course, soon demanded; and in 1791, the territory was divided into the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada, and constitutions upon the colonial model then in vogue were granted to each. A governor, or lieutenant-governor, and executive council represented the Crown; while lords and commons were mimicked in a nominated legislative council and

representative assembly. It may be easily conceived that this machinery could work but poorly in the lower province, where the French settlers still clung to the customs of their ancient country, and, viewing their new compatriots as intruders, hated them and their novel privileges, which they neither comprehended nor admired. Among the Anglo-Saxon population the acquirement of a government popular in form naturally led to a demand for the reality of popular power: "The assembly (says Lord Durham in his celebrated report) were in a state of continuous warfare with the executive, for the purpose of obtaining the powers inherent to a representative body, by the very nature of representative government;" and the warfare was carried on in the old English method, by struggles for the power of the purse. A curious cooperation, without sympathy or combination, then took place between the two provincial nations.

The small class of educated men among the habitans — most of them village surgeons or notaries - began to feel the corrupting influence, even though they knew not the nobler uses, of liberty. They grew quickly into a caste of demagogues, possessed of absolute control over the simple rustics among whom they lived, and whose ignorance of the English language placed them at the mercy of their leaders for any exposition of the policy of the home Government it might please them to afford. Thus the Nation Canadienne fought against the same foe, without using the same flag as the Anglo-Saxon demagogues; and as both, unfortunately, had many real grievances to set in the front of their battle, a violent and protracted agitation was begun, which, in the year 1837, waxed into a rebellion. A suppression of this outbreak by the strong hand, and a suspension of the constitution followed, the occurrence those events being fortunately productive of a large increase of the knowledge of all parties. The habitans were taught the power of England, and the selfishness and pusillanimity of their own leaders; the mass of British settlers came to know-perhaps to form an exaggerated estimate of their importance as defenders of the British connexion; the American sympathisers and annexationists were

of

made acquainted with the total absence of sympathy between themselves and all classes of the colonial population; the home Government learned the wisdom the separation of the United States had failed to teach them - of frank and early concessions of claims that in the long run cannot be withstood. After two years of contention and anxious deliberation, the two Canadas were united, in 1839, into one province for the purposes of executive Government and Legislature, and the constitution was restored in the shape in which it now exists. The executive power was entrusted to a GovernorGeneral appointed by the Crown, and the power of legislation was committed to a Provincial Parliament, composed of a Legislative Council, nominated by the Governor, and a Legisla tive Assembly elected by the people. To the upper house somewhat of an aristocratic quality was sought to be given, by conferring upon the members a life tenure of their seats, with the title of honourable; while the popular character of the Assembly was secured by providing for annual sessions of the legislature. In this arrangement the French party, which before the rebellion had preponderated in the lower province, was placed in a minority, and the determination to Anglicise the colony was mildly announced by a provision in the Constitution Act, directing all votes and proceedings of the legislature to be recorded in the English tongue. The old sore, nevertheless, still remained. "In a society" (observes Lord Elgin, in a despatch addressed to Earl Grey in 1849)," singu larly democratic in its structure, where diversities of race supplied special elements of confusion, and where, consequently, it was most important that constituted authority should be respected, the moral influence of law and government was enfeebled by the existence of perpetual strife between the powers that ought to have afforded each other a mutual support.' power of the purse became again the fruitful source of contention, and a fierce thirst for the emoluments of place, ever the vice of constitutional governments, and infinitely enhanced in dependencies, stunted the growth of the spirit of self-reliance, which is their chiefest virtue. The home Government, we are bound to say, met those difficulties with exemplary pa

The

tience and good feeling, and the colony has been singularly fortunate in being ruled by governors fitted by their moderation, firmness, and constitutional knowledge for the discharge of the hard task committed to them. The bold design of confounding faction by permitting the growth of parliamentary parties, was conceived and executed.

"The principles of constitutional or parliamentary government" (says Lord Elgin, in his despatch, dated 18th December, 1854), "admitted in theory since the date of the publication of the report of the Earl of Durham on Canadian affairs, have been, during the past few years, allowed their full effect in practice. All attempts to give a monopoly of office to one party in the province, or to relieve the provincial ministers from the responsibility properly attaching to their position as servants of the Crown within the colony, have been abandoned. The Governor has accepted frankly as advisers the individuals who have possessed from time to time the confidence of the country and of the legislature, on the distinct understanding, faithfully adhered to, that they should enjoy his support and favour so long as they continued to merit them by fidelity to the Crown, and devotion to the interests of the province."

This strategy, as wise as it was bold, has been accompanied by a gradual withdrawal of the Imperial Government and Parliament from legislative interference, and from the exercise of patronage in colonial affairs. It, no doubt, goes a long way toward a virtual separation of the province from the mother country; but it has also forced the former far on her way toward a condition of self-reliance, and, by withdrawing the bond of a common object of enmity from the several factions, it has driven them into a more wholesome strife for the common good. The "clear grits" of Upper Canada, and the "partie rouge of the lower province, Orangemen and Conservatives, may still retain a large liberty of quarrelling among themselves; but there are few colonialoffice" grievances, and but a beggarly account of imperial patronage, in assaults upon which they can now combine: they are choked off each other's throats by the strong necessity of unit