Constitutions and systems of government are good or bad according to the kinds of people to which they are applied, the stage of development which they have reached, and the particular circumstances existing at a given time inside and outside the land. It was only with much hesitation that representative institutions had been given to Canada; and one governor and another, bearing in mind the conditions which had preceded the War of Independence, had laid stress on the necessity of having a strong Executive, and on the growing danger of colonial democracy. They were not ignorant or shortsighted men; they looked facts in the face and argued from past experience in America. Again, if the officials were incompetent placemen, out of sympathy with the people, it was the governors who laid stress on the necessity of filling official positions with first-rate men and who occasionally took a strong line with the men whom they did not consider to be adequate. Moreover some of the officials, notably the judicial and legal officers, placed themselves in opposition to the local government and posed as defenders of the people. Craig dispensed, for the time at any rate, with the services of two law officers. One of them, Uniacke, who had been in Nova Scotia, was made Attorney-General of Lower Canada by Lord Liverpool, and, being considered by the governor to be unfit for his duties, was sent on leave to England in 1810 with a request that he should be removed from his office. He subsequently returned to his work in Canada. The other, James Stuart, became a notable figure in Canadian history. He was the son of a United Empire Loyalist, the rector of Kingston in Ontario. He had been appointed Solicitor-General of Lower Canada by Milnes in 1801, but after Craig’s arrival ranged himself, as a member of the Assembly, in opposition to the governor, and in 1809 was obliged to resign his appointment. After some years of bitter opposition to the government, he lived to become a leading advocate of reunion of the two provinces, to be appointed Attorney-General, to be impeached by the Assembly and again deprived of his office, and finally to be appointed by Lord Durham Chief Justice of Lower Canada and to be created a baronet for his public services. [Sidenote: Thorpe and Willcocks.]