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Date: 1866-04-27
By: Montreal Herald
Citation: “THE GLOBE’S NEW IDEA OF RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT” Montreal Herald (27 April, 1866)
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THE “GLOBE’S” NEW IDEA OF RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT.

—Mr. Brown having been all his life the professed advocate of the rights of the People to make their opinions govern in the Colonies, exactly as in England, through their representatives in Parliament and by Ministries having the confidence of the popular branch of the Legislature, is now, of course, arguing on the other side, and showing as well as he can, that Governors are to use their prerogatives to impose their own will upon the People, without regard to their opinions expressed on the hustings or through Ministers enjoying Parliamentary confidence. With the laudable object of doing things “thorough” as another great advocate of arbitrary power used to express it a couple of centuries ago, the Globe has framed a reply to the Herald. A few days ago, playing the same game, he had in a purring cat-like style suggested a number of circumstances to justify Governor Gordon’s course. We took up each of these circumstances, and showed that with one exception, all of them were present in the situation of affairs when Sir Edmund Head forced a resignation upon Mr. Brown; and that that exception, which involved the most important point of all—namely, the opinion of the majority of the House of Assembly—was in favour of Sir Edmund Head, and against Mr. Gordon. The Globe answers these statements in an article which we copy elsewhere; but he controverts none of them. He thus admits that the former reasons, if they are sufficient for the defence of Mr. Gordon, must have been just as sufficient, and even more than sufficient, for the defence of Sir Edmund Head. He, therefore, gives them up, and now presents us with a new reason, which he did not at first produce, but which is quite as easily disposed of as the rest. “The Herald’s difficulty is that it has missed altogether the parallel between the two cases, so far as it has yet been established. In 1858 Governor Head took into office a new Ministry, with the knowledge that the Assembly was probably hostile to his new advisers.” The Globe had better have given us at once the conclusive fact which establishes the real want of parallel; for we shall have to come to that at last—viz., that Sir Edmund had to deal with Brown, and that Mr. Gordon had to deal with Smith who is a wholly different person, as are Jones and Robinson, either of whom might be constitutionally decapitated, when it would be crying injustice to touch a hair of a Brown head. Everything relating to the Browns is of course sui generis, and must be dealt with on grounds specially adapted to that privileged family. The difference in names is really just as important a distinction between the two cases, as the one which the Globe now gravely sets forth to renew a defence, which has failed on the original plan. We find nothing in any constitutional writers about new or old Ministries, or Ministries accepting office under one or another set of circumstances. But what these writers lay down; what the Imperial government has declared, again and again; and what the Globe has always contended for till its editor sold out his opinions, is that the Sovereign, or the Sovereign’s representative, ought to take the advice of a Ministry, which is legitimately in [illegible] legitimately in office in 1858, but the consideration of that question does not come up now, and our proposition will not be disputed by the Globe. It is the obligation to receive advice from a Ministry, fairly holding office, which alone can convict Sir Edmund of the wrong doing which the Globe so strenuously imputed to him. If there is no such obligation—if the Governor has a right, as a matter of personal caprice or judgement, in order to favour a particular party, or to promote a favourite policy, to refuse the advice tendered him by his Ministers—then it is plain that Governor Head did no wrong in assuming on his own judgement that Mr. Brown could not govern the country, and in playing off the neat little sell which guaranteed his judgment against refutation. The country sustained him, did it not? Mr. Brown has attempted to put to us a crucial question—let him answer the above, and show how that being the case there was any wrong done, except upon the principle, that with a Cabinet rightfully in office, the Governor ought to act upon their advice; by a still stronger reason ought not to act against their advice; and by the strongest of all reasons—the most elementary of all constitutional doctrines—ought not to act without some advice from recognized and responsible Ministers. Sir Edmund Head committed the mildest of these errors, though under circumstances of great aggravation. Mr. Gordon has committed the most serious of them, with aggravation at least as great. The crucial question which has been proposed to us, we have no difficulty in answering, and we shall do so just as the Globe as always hitherto answered it, and would still do, but for its editor’s recent apostacy from the doctrines of his whole life. He asks: “by the way, does the Herald take the ground, that the Crown is compelled in every contingency to retain advisers who have a Parliamentary majority?” We reply:—technically and grammatically: No; for to say Yes would exclude all possible exceptions, and there are exceptions to every rule. Just as clearly we say Yes—in practice, and excipiens excipiendas. If not, what did Mr. Brown mean, we again ask, by condemning Lord Metcalfe and Sir Edmund Head? What did Mr. Cardwell mean by declaring that Sir Charles Darling was bound to accept Ministers who might be presented to him in the regular course of Parliamentary proceedings”? and what does May, the greatest of all constitutional authorities, mean, when he says in the chapter devoted especially to the Colonies, that the Governor, like the Sovereign whom he represents, holds himself aloof from and is superior to parties, and governs through constitutional advisers who have acquired”—not, be it observed, whom the Governor may think likely to acquire—“an ascendency in the Legislature?” Have Mr. Gordon’s present advisers acquired any ascendency in the Legislature?

We have declined to reply in the affirmative to the broad question which the Globe has put to us. We have acknowledged that like the rules of many other sciences this one has its exceptions. But men who are reasonably imbued with the principles of science are aware that the very exceptions arise out of the same general reasoning as the rules themselves, or as it is vulgarly said, prove the rules. This is beautifully illustrated in the laws of that consistent and symmetrical system the British constitution. The obligation on the Governor to act upon the advice of his Ministry, has for its object the conciliation of the action of the Sovereign authority with the wishes of the People, and the exceptions occur when doubts arise—not from personal conviction in the mind of the Governor—not from intuitive perceptions—not from spirit rappings, or any such hazardous indications; but from facts officially made known to him, arising in the working of the constitution itself. We shall be very practical in our illustrations. Suppose an election has taken place avowedly to test the opinions of the People on a particular measure, and the result is an unmistakeable declaration on one side or the other; and suppose that within a year after such a declaration of the popular will the men who were chosen as its mouth-pieces and representatives, should either for bribes or from whim, undertake to do precisely the contrary of that which they were sent to Parliament to do. These would be all facts in the working of the constitution, admitting of no dispute, and plainly involving a most serious doubt if the Ministry which had the confidence of such a venal or whimsical, and in either case treacherous House, had also the confidence of the People. That would have been the case in New Brunswick if any measure had been carried in favour of Confederation by a House a twelve-month ago elected to prevent that revolution from being consummated. Or suppose that a House of Assembly, or a Legislative Council, having been elected under a well ascertained and defined constitution, with none but the ordinary issues before the People, should on its own mere motion, or on external instigation, determine to vote the country into an absolute Monarchy, or a Federal Non descript, or especially to change the tenure of their seats by the will of the People, into that of well paid irresponsible offices for life. This would be the case of Nova Scotia, and it would certainly be very doubtful if the Ministry which had the confidence of such a House had also that of those who elected it. It would also be quite within the legitimate functions of a Governor to secure an appeal to the people before he permitted the overturn of their institutions, and thus to maintain that harmony between the different great bodies of the State which is of the essence of our constitution and confers on it its great beauty and value.