36 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



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In that comparison it will be found that the Canadian territories 

 have enjoyed many advantages; not always, it is to be feared, attri- 

 butable to the "colonial policy" of the Dominion. 



In both cases there was a preliminary conciliar stage: in the one 

 case from the Proclamation of October, 1763, to the Quebec Act of 

 1774, in the other from the transfer of 1870 to the North-West Terri- 

 tories Act of 1875. In both cases there was a stable and statutory 

 period under Governor and Council: in the one case from the Quebec 

 Act to the Constitutional Act oî 1791, in the other from the Territories 

 Act to its consummation in an Assembly in 1888. In both cases the 

 contest for responsible government followed inevitably with inexorable 

 though in some respects very dissimilar results: in the one case the 

 Act of Union and the administration of Lord Elgin, in the other the 

 contest for fiscal control and the Act of 1897. In both cases a period 

 of strenuous politics supervenes before provincial organization in the 

 Dominion. Here, at least, there is more of contrast than of com- 

 parison, and it must be admitted that the element of contrast still 

 survives the achievement of provincial status. 



I. From Confederation to Empire 



The exercise of imperial functions by the federal government 

 over areas in subordinate territorial status involved a far-reaching 

 change, it would seem, in the nature and amplitude of the original 

 Canadian Confederation. 



Had the contention of the original province of Canada prevailed 

 before Confederation, the annexation of Rupert's Land and the North- 

 Western Territories would perhaps have raised no constitutional 

 difficulties in the Dominion in 1867. Had the districts on the Sask- 

 atchewan and Red rivers been united to "Canada" (as the Committee 

 of the British House of Commons recommended in 1857) as new 

 territory was added to British Columbia in 1863, or to Ontario and 

 Quebec in 1912, representation in the "Canadian" legislature would 

 have followed as a matter of course. The new territory would have 

 been upon an equal footing with the old, for the best of reasons that 

 it would have been indistinguishable from it. 



The Confederation of 1867 raised a new set of legal problems 

 within the British Empire, but it is curious that a prospective imperial 

 rôle for the Dominion with regard to subordinate territory was not 

 immediately recognized as one of them. 



The Dominion of Canada in 1867 was a Confederation of equal 

 provinces, each, within the limits of the Act, intended to "retain its 



