It is not easy to decide how much ground there was for his complaints. If the situation was difficult, the difficulty had partly arisen from the bad custom, of which he had availed himself, of allowing governors and other holders of posts in the colonies to remain for an inordinate time at home while still retaining office and receiving the pay attaching to it. At the very time when he was most wanted in Canada to carry out the division of the two provinces, and to make the central authority of the Governor-in-Chief strongly felt from the first, he had remained away for fully two years, thereby allowing the new system to come into being and to make some progress before there was any Governor-in-Chief on the spot. Coming out to Canada he found the Lieutenant-Governors corresponding direct with the Home Government, and it was hardly reasonable to insist that they should be debarred from doing so, provided that, as the Duke of Portland, who succeeded Dundas, pointed out, the Governor-in-Chief was supplied with copies of the correspondence. An analogous case is that of Australia at the present day. The governors of the separate states correspond directly with the Colonial Office, sending copies of important dispatches to the Governor-General of the Commonwealth. Had Dorchester not been absent, when Simcoe took up his appointment in Upper Canada, and had his mind not been prejudiced by bitter memories of the days of Germain, it is possible that friction might not have arisen. On the other hand the limits of the authority of the Governor-in-Chief and of the Lieutenant-Governors in the British North American provinces seem not to have been clearly defined, with the result that, as years went on, the Governor-in-Chief gradually became little more than Governor of Lower Canada, and the Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada became, in civil matters, governor of that province in all but the name. When Lord Dalhousie was appointed Governor-in-Chief, Sir Peregrine Maitland, then Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada, asked the Secretary of State for a ruling on the subject; and Lord Bathurst’s answer, dated the 9th of February, 1821, was that ‘So long as the Governor-in-Chief is not resident within the province of Upper Canada, and does not take the oaths of office in Upper Canada, he has no control whatever over any part of the civil administration, nor are you bound to comply with his directions or to communicate with him on any act of your civil government. To His Majesty you are alone responsible for the conduct of the civil administration’. If, on the other hand, the Governor-in-Chief were to take up his residence in Upper Canada and be sworn into office, the Secretary of State laid down that the functions of the Lieutenant-Governor would be entirely suspended. By this date, therefore, the two appointments had become exclusive of each other. At a later date, when Lord Durham was going out to Canada, Lord