The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 46
Provincial Institutions
Provincial Institutions.
Excellent as were these institutions in principle, and admirably as they managed affairs in the early days when the Assembly was yet too weak to molest them, they had inherent defects. Their sphere of action was neither defined nor independent. Their finance was dependent on that of the General Government, and they suffered by its wasteful extravagance and needless wars. They were prohibited from passing laws that created a criminal offence and, being thus deprived of the power of compelling statutory declarations, they could only raise a revenue by the rudest and most inefficient means. Their laws had to receive the sanction of the General Government and their elected chief was made responsible to it and not to the people who elected him. The latter was a fatal defect. It forced the Councils to resort to a system of "responsible ministries" unsuited to Legislatures of their character. With an elected chief, the Executive and Legislature might easily have been kept distinct. A con- tinuous and steady control over the finances and over the administration, might have been found in the well-proved expedient of giving to the Councils power to override the veto of the Superintendent by a fixed majority of their members. Had they possessed this power, common in similarly constituted Legislatures, the work of the largest province could have been done by the Superintendent with a couple of secretaries (of his own selection and approved by the Council) instead of with the responsible advisers," by whom the Council was obliged to surround him. Had this been done we should have been saved the party intrigues and the mimic political struggles which so ably aided the General Government in combating institutions that it was bent upon destroying, but which a truer wisdom would have induced it to reform.