THE GENERAL ADVANTAGE OF CANADA. 1 1 



rights were not respected, and the Northwest Territories had a simi- 

 lar rebellion in 1885. British Columbia threatened to secede because 

 the railway construction contract, if it may be so called, was violated. 

 Quebec was greatly disturbed in 1889 over the Jesuits' Estates Bill. 

 Ontario has been aroused on various occasions, and the Boundary 

 Award, the Rivers and Streams Bill, the ownership of timber and 

 minerals on Crown lands, and several other questions of large im- 

 portance have been fought from court to court and settled on final 

 appeals before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council where, 

 with some clearness and accuracy, and after the expenditure of an 

 enormous amount of money and energy, certain rules have been es- 

 tablished determining the extent of provincial jurisdiction and the 

 limits of federal control. 



The general rule of law established by the Privy Council under 

 Section 92 dealing with the exclusive powers of the province has de- 

 termined that the British North America Act 



" Conferred powers, not in any sense to be exercised by delegation 

 from, or as agents of, the Imperial Parliament, but authority as 

 plenary and ample — within the limits prescribed by Section 92 — as 

 the Imperial Parhament in the plentitude of its powers possessed 

 and could bestow. Within these limits of subject and area, the 

 Local Legislature is supreme, and it has the same authority as the 

 Imperial Parliament, or the Parliament of the Dominion, would 

 have under like circumstances." 



History repeats itself in curious ways. The Fathers of the 

 American Constitution, following a period of war and strife, and, 

 thinking to avoid what seemed to them weaknesses in the English 

 Constitution, framed a measure that has signally failed in one im- 

 portant respect to produce the end they thought most desirable of 

 accomplishment; and, in much the same way, some of the Fathers 

 of the Canadian Constitution, who had contended for the idea of 

 provincial subordination, begotten also of a time when strife and 

 warfare seemed to have exposed the true inwardness of things, lived 

 to see that their experiment in nation founding produced results, in 

 some respects, exactly the opposite to what they had expected to 

 attain. 



The decided cases under the British North America Act estab- 

 lish two further propositions. The first is, that, where Parliament 

 enacts, for example, the Railway Act, such an act carries with it the 

 right to the enforcement of all necessa'-y incidental powers appur- 

 tenant to the main measure, although the exercise of these powers 

 may operate as a direct interference with " Property and Civil 



