Responsible Government
No formal provision for responsible government was included in the Act of Union 1840. Early Governors of the province were closely involved in political affairs, maintaining a right to make Executive Council and other appointments without the input of the legislative assembly.
However, in 1848 the Earl of Elgin, the then Governor General, appointed a Cabinet nominated by the majority party of the Legislative Assembly, the Baldwin-Lafontaine coalition that had won elections in January. Lord Elgin upheld the principles of responsible government by not repealing the Rebellion Losses Bill, which was highly unpopular with some English-speaking Loyalists who favoured imperial over majority rule.
Read more about this topic: Province Of Canada
Famous quotes containing the words responsible and/or government:
“After a certain number of years our faces become our biographies. We get to be responsible for our faces.”
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“The powers of the federal government ... result from the compact to which the states are parties, [and are] limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting that compact.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)