Document Information

Date: 1864-10-12
By: George Brown
Citation: George Brown Papers, Drafts of the Quebec Resolutions, Notes on the Distribution of Powers, October 12th, 1864 (MG 24, B 40, Vol. 21, p. 3764-3766).
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.

3764[1]

Shall the ^[illegible] provided items be committed to the general government or to the local?

3765

3766

Local Bodies

Power to be defined in constitutional act
Gen. Gov to be ^[illegible] of federal gov.
Lower House + Upper House

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 3764 (above) along with MG24 B40 3765 (next page) are in fact a large single sheet folded in two. Also, MG24 B40 3764-3765 ‘answers’ the ‘questions’ posed in MG24 B40 3763 earlier (closely examine here MG24 B40 3763 and MG24 B40 3765). I have tentatively dated the set MG24 B40 3764-3765 October 12^th for the simple reason that MG24 B40 3765 possesses an amendment on the number of legislative councillors the new federation should have, which takes the form in MG24 B40 3765 of an earlier draft of the resolutions actually submitted in conference on October 13^th, 1864 (closely compare with A.A. Macdonald’s (PEI) “Notes,” p. 187 in this volume).

I would like to highlight two points about the distribution of powers. The distribution of power in MG24 B40 3764-3765 surprisingly follows the structure and content of the post-Charlottetown distribution of powers that is found in Lieut.-Governor Gordon’s September 22^nd despatch (see pp. 110-111, in this volume). The distribution of powers in MG24 B40 3764 preserves almost everything from that ‘post-Charlottetown’ version except provisions regarding the control of public lands, immigration, and mines and minerals which are missing in this version and found in the Gordon despatch.

As such, MG24 B40 3764-3765 (along with Lieut.-Governor Gordon’s despatch) provide actual evidence that much of the structure of the distribution of powers had already been discussed and ‘worked on’ after the close of the Charlottetown Conference September 1864. This is significant because the delegates did not begin drafting resolutions at the Quebec Conference from scratch. Far from it. The Charlottetown Conference, September 1864, records might be helpful. If we want to understand the origins of the federal distribution of powers, we might need to turn to these earlier sources. As Lieut.-Governor Gordon tellingly observes, what the delegates did need to work out at Quebec was ‘the balance’ of this new distribution of power. [C.D.]