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Date: 1867-03-08
By: The Montreal Herald
Citation: “Government by Party”, The Montreal Herald (8 March, 1867)
Other formats: TBA

Government by Party.

—There is one peculiarity of our new Constitution which we fear will not be advantageous, though hitherto it has been strangely overlooked—we mean the appointment of Lieutenant Governors to the several Provinces. These are to be named by the Governor General, who as a British nobleman himself, unconnected with Provincial politics, will never be looked upon as head or chief of a party. But the Lieutenant Governors by him appointed will probably be Provincials: that is to say persons already well known in the Provinces by their political antecedents, or in other word, strong “party men,” for nowhere does “party spirit” run stronger than here. Now if the Lieutenant Governorships are to be mere honorary posts, or sinecures, this will be of little consequence; but if they are really to be of some weight in the State, then shall we have reproduced in Canada one of the worst features of American democracy—that, to wit, which renders it inevitable that the chief Executive shall always be a strong “party man,” and therefore the head rather of a political party, than of the State. It is the great advantage of hereditary monarchy that the Executive is of no party; it will be one inevitable disadvantage of the new form of Government in Canada, that the Provincial Executive will always be a “party man”—unless indeed the Governor General select to fill the seats of the Lieutenant Governors, obscure men, who have taken no prominent or decided part in Provincial politics. But this is unlikely.

Only fancy Mr. George Brown Lieutenant Governor of the Province of Ontario! What respect for such a man or his government could the Catholics of that Province entertain? What confidence could they have in him, or in his administration? He would represent to them, not the Queen holding the scales of justice impartially, but the bitter, unprincipled, un-scrupulons partisan. We do not pretend that such an outrage as making Mr. George Brown Lieutenant Governor will actually be perpetrated; but the thing is not impossible, and the appointment, if made, would be strictly legal. Yet would the moral effects be most disastrous; more even than the appointment of Orange Magistrates would it bring the administration of justice into suspicion and contempt in Upper Canada, for the fountain would be poisoned at its source.

Better no Provincial Lieutenant Governors, than to have party men, who have taken an active part in Provincial politics, raised to the post; better by far that all Executive functions should be left in the hands of the Governor General. If we must have Lieutenant Governors, however, they should be named directly by the Queen, and selected, either from strangers to the Province—as is actually the case with all Colonial Governors; or it should be a strict proviso that if a Provincial be appointed, he be one who has never had a seat in the Provincial Legislature, or taken any part whatever in our provincial politics. “Party men” in a Legislature are in their place; but in the Executive or Judicial branches of Government they are a curse to the community.