[martin] the colonial POLICY OF THE DOMINION 41 



2nd 1874, and they respectfully represent that such long delay 

 has paralyzed the action of the Council." ^'^ 



At the close of the purely conciliar period the Lieutenant- 

 Governor was able to review the work of the Council with considerable 

 gratification. By the North-West Territories Act of 1875 provision, 

 was made for a separate Lieutenant-Governor for the Territories and 

 for an appointed Council of not more than five members, to be re- 

 inforced by elected members as soon as electoral districts of 1,000 

 square miles should be found to contain 1,000 adult inhabitants. 

 When such elected representatives should come to number twenty- 

 one, 



"the members so elected shall be constituted and designated as 

 the Legislative Assembly of the North-West Territories, and all 

 the powers of this Act vested in the Council shall be thenceforth 

 vested in and exercisable by the said Legislative Assembly." 



The second stage of the Canadian conciliar period (1876-1888) 

 compares very favourably with the corresponding phase in the earlier 

 colonies. There is no counterpart in Canada to the fatal policy of 

 building up "the connection" with the mother country upon the 

 basis of special privileges and vested interests. There is no American 

 or French Revolution to palliate short-sighted policies of expediency. 

 Nothing could be more conducive to the normal development towards 

 self-government than the placid but exuberant growth of the West. 

 The automatic development of the Council into an Assembly was 

 not, it is true, a Canadian invention. It had already become a 

 recognized British expedient, nowhere perhaps more usefully em- 

 ployed than in the case of British Columbia prior to Confederation. 

 It served, however, to point the way to self-government, whereas 

 the Quebec Act had been regarded by the American colonies — -not 

 unjustifiably — as "dangerous and destructive of American rights." 



The problem was further simplified by the fact that the Terri- 

 tories were, of course, an integral part of the Dominion with ultimate 

 provincial status as their manifest destiny. "The same constitution 

 as the other provinces possessed would ultimately be conferred upon 

 the country." ^^ From the election of the first member of Council in 

 1881 to the culmination of the process in the election of twenty-two 

 members in 1888, the development was swift and eventful. The 

 collapse of the "boom," the less spectacular work of settlement, the 

 building of the C.P.R., the Riel Rebellion, all fall within this period; 



loOliver, The Canadian North-West, p. 1031. 



^^Joseph Howe in Recent Disturbances in the Red River Settlement, 1870, p. 51. 



