46 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



passed into history," but it will be sufficient to observe that the 

 prairie provinces of Canada constitute, as far as I know, the only 

 exceptions among the self-governing provinces and Dominions of the 

 British Commonwealth to this fundamental practice of responsible 

 government. Even in the case of the prairie provinces, the so-called 

 "subsidy in lieu of lands" was regarded, even by Sir Wilfrid Laurier, 

 as confirming rather than supplanting this "guiding principle" ^^ 

 of responsible government and of Confederation; and one of the 

 members of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council recently 

 expressed some astonishment at the survival of this constitutional 

 anomaly. 



With regard to public lands, therefore, the "colonial policy" 

 of the Dominion has been, in some respects, more reactionary than 

 that of George III with regard to the old province of Quebec. More 

 than 20,000,000 acres of lands in Manitoba have been alienated from 

 provincial control. Over six million acres in Alberta were granted 

 to railway companies for the construction of railways in other pro- 

 vinces. In this respect, at least, Manitoba since 1870 and Saskat- 

 chewan and Alberta since 1905 have been not provinces but "colonies " 

 of the Dominion. 



The achievement of responsible government in the Canadian 

 territories confirms the reflection that this most fundamental of all 

 British processes of government has been the result of the cumulative 

 wisdom of experience. In the original experiment the issue was 

 defined for the first time only at the Grand Remonstrance of 1641, 

 after nearly 400 years of parliamentary development. It was solved 

 only after another century and a half, by empirical methods so gradual 

 in their operation that even in the early nineteenth century the process 

 had scarcely been reduced to a body of political doctrine. 



The same fundamental problem emerged, as it was bound to 

 emerge, in the American colonies after more than 100 years of repre- 

 sentative institutions; though even Chatham and Burke seem to 

 have recognized only its incipient stages. The same problem came 

 to an issue upon Canadian soil less than fifty years after the granting 

 of an Assembly by the Constitutional Act. The issue might have 

 arisen even more promptly had the war of 1812 not interrupted the 

 process. 



In the Canadian territories the problem was stated within nine 

 months and effectually solved within nine years of the meeting of a 



I'Sir Wilfrid Laurier to Hon. A. L. Sifton, Aug. 7, 1911. 



