[[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.
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 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."[[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]]