Document Information

Date: 1864-10-24
By: George Brown
Citation: George Brown Papers, Drafts of the Quebec Resolutions, Amended Distribution of Powers (“Local Legislature”), October 24th, 1864 (MG 24, B 40, Vol. 21, p. 3747).
Other formats: Click here to view the original document (PDF).
Click for our e-book from which the transcription and footnotes come from: Charles Dumais, The Quebec Resolutions: Including Several Never-Published Preliminary Drafts by George Brown and John A. Macdonald & a Collection of all Previously-Published Primary Documents Relating to the Conference, Second Edition (Calgary: Canadian Constitution Foundation, 2025).
Note: The original text also contains handwritten notes and other marginalia. Click here to view an explanatory document on how we have transcribed handwritten notes from the publication mentioned above (Dumais, Quebec Resolutions, 2025). The footnote numbers (endnotes on our website) may not match because in the book the numbers restart for each page, but on our website, they are continual.

 3747[1]

Confidential.

Resolved, ––

That it shall be competent for the local legislature to make laws respecting:

1. Agriculture.
2. Education.
3. ^[Im] Emigration.
4. The sale and management of public lands, excepting lands held for general purposes by the General Government.
5. Property and civil rights, excepting those portions thereof assigned to the general legislature.
6. Municipal Institutions.
7. Inland Fisheries.
8. The construction, maintenance and management of Penitentiaries, and of Public and Reformatory Prisons.
9. The construction, maintenance and management of Hospitals, Charities and Eleemosynary Institutions.
10. All local works.
11. The Administration of Justice, and the constitution, maintenance and organization of the Courts, both of Civil and Criminal Jurisdiction.
12. The establishment of local offices and the appointment, payment and removal of local officers.
13. The power of direct Taxation.
14. Borrowing money on the credit of the Province.
15. Shop, Saloon, Tavern, and Auctioneer licenses.
16. Private and Local matters.

Endnotes

(FROM: Charles Dumais, The Quebec Resolutions: Including Several Never-Published Preliminary Drafts by George Brown and John A. Macdonald & a Collection of all Previously-Published Primary Documents Relating to the Conference, Second Edition (Calgary: Canadian Constitution Foundation, 2025). )

[1] MG24 B40 3747 (above) features the local distribution of power as formally submitted to committee on October 24^th, 1864 (see H. Bernard’s “Minutes,” pp. 145-146). For this reason, I have tentatively dated it October 24^th, 1864. Like MG24 B40 3746 (previous set), the provincial powers follow the draft structure of the post-Charlottetown distribution of powers (see Lieutenant-Governor Gordon’s despatch on Sep. 22, 1864 on the proposed division of powers, pp. 110-111). The provincial powers are less broad in scope than the federal powers, and they focus almost exclusively on all local matters unrelated to the economy and trade, perhaps reflecting an understanding that the powers of the federal government would initially be broad on matters relating to the economy and trade (including interprovincial trade), while the provincial powers would be the inverse – i.e., while they would be especially defined. [C.D.]