The constitutional troubles which subsequently became so acute in Lower Canada, connected more especially with the attempt to obtain a Civil List, were due to the fact that the revenues of the Crown were not sufficient to cover the expenses of the public service without the aid of votes from the popular Assembly. It was this constant friction which had preluded the War of Independence, and this it was which Grenville hoped to avoid by establishing an adequate fund in the colony at the disposal of the Crown alone. [Sidenote: Chief Justice Smith.] [Sidenote: His proposals for a general Legislature for the British North American Provinces.] But a wider and more statesmanlike safeguard against the evils of colonial democracy in the eighteenth century was proposed in connexion with this Canada Act, though not by the Imperial Government. The post of Chief Justice of Canada, which Livius had held, was now after a long interregnum filled by the appointment of William Smith, who had been born in the state of New York, had been Chief Justice of that state, and, coming to England with Dorchester after the Peace of 1783, had been appointed to succeed Livius and had accompanied the Governor-General out to Canada. Invited by Dorchester to give his views upon the draft of the Bill which Grenville had sent out, he embodied them in a remarkable letter which was forwarded to the Home Government. The Bill, he thought, greatly improved ‘the old mould of our colonial governments, for even those called the Royal provinces, to distinguish them from the proprietary and chartered republics of the Stuart kings, had essential faults and the same general tendency’; but he missed in it ‘the expected establishment to put what remains to Great Britain of her ancient dominions in North America under one general direction, for the united interests and safety of every branch of the Empire’. It was when the old North American colonies became prosperous that the evils inherent in their system produced their full effect, and he dreaded lest the prosperity which he predicted for the two provinces of Canada might again in time work ruin, unless what he considered to be the one main safeguard were provided from the beginning of constitutional government. ‘Native as I am of one of the old provinces,’ he wrote, ‘and early in the public service and councils, I trace the late revolt and rent to a remoter cause than those to which it is ordinarily ascribed. The truth is that the country had outgrown its government, and wanted the true remedy for more than half a century before the rupture commenced.... To expect wisdom and moderation from near a score of petty parliaments, consisting in effect of only one of the three necessary branches of a parliament, must, after the light brought by experience, appear to have been a very extravagant expectation.... An American Assembly, quiet in the weakness of their infancy, could not but discover in their elevation to