Counsel of Lord Liverpool, the Colonial Secretary, to James Craig, Documents Relating to the Constitutional History of Canada, 1791-1818

Liverpool, Robert Banks Jenkinson

[Lord Liverpool warned that the executive government must not become dependent upon the Assembly.]

It would indeed have been wholly inconsistent with the nature of a colony, and its necessary connection with the mother country, that the Executive government should have been placed in the same state of dependence upon a local legislature, as most usefully subsists reciprocally between the Crown and the Parliament of the United Kingdom.

In Canada therefore, the Executive government is not dependent upon the Assembly, either for the supplies requisite for defraying the expenses of the Civil Government of the province nor for the military force essential for its security and protection.

The military force which is judged necessary for these purposes is provided from home, and I understand that the permanent revenue of the province, together with what it has been usual to draw from the military chest is fully sufficient for all the expenses of the civil government.

The Executive government therefore, in Canada, is in no way necessarily dependent upon the House of Assembly—all laws to regulate the commercial intercourse between Canada and other parts of the world, may according to the Constitution, be passed by the Imperial Parliament.