The directness and strength of the influence which men like Sir Henry Taylor and Sir James Stephen exercised, both on opinion and events, may be inferred from Taylor's confessions with regard to the slave question in the West Indies, and the extent to which even Peel himself had to depend for information, and occasionally for direction, on the permanent men.[6] It seems clear, too, that up till the year when Lord John Russell took over the Colonial Office, Stephen had a great {236} say in Canadian affairs, especially under Glenelg's regime. "As to his views upon other Colonial questions," says Taylor, "they were perhaps more liberal than those of most of his chiefs; and at one important conjuncture he miscalculated the effect of a liberal confidence placed in a Canadian Assembly, and threw more power into their hands than he intended them to possess."[7] On the assumption that he was responsible for Glenelg's benevolent view of Canadian local rights, one might attribute something of Lord John Russell's over logical and casuistical declarations concerning responsible government to Buller's "Mr. Mother-country." But it is absurd to suppose that Russell's independent mind operated long under any sub-secretarial influence; more especially since the rapid succession of startling events in Canada made his daring and unconventional statesmanship a fitter means of government than the plodding methods of the bureaucrat. After 1841, Stanley and Stephen were too little sympathetic towards each other's methods and ideas, and Gladstone too strongly fortified in his own opinions, for Stephen's influence to creep in; while the Whig government which entered as he left the Colonial Office, had, {237} in Grey, a Secretary of State too learned in the affairs of his department to reflect the last influences of his retiring under-secretary. Whatever, then, Mr. Over-Secretary Stephen did to dominate Lord Glenelg, and to initiate the concession of responsible government to Canada, his influence must speedily have sunk to a very secondary position, and the independent and conscious intentions of the responsible ministers held complete sway. It is interesting to note that, according to his son, he seems to have come to share "the opinions prevalent among the liberal party that the colonies would soon be detached from the mother-country."[8] The actual starting-point of the development of British opinion with regard to Canadian institutions is perfectly definite. It dates from the co-operation and mutual influence of a little group of experts in colonial matters, of whom Charles Buller and Gibbon Wakefield were the moving spirits, and the Earl of Durham the illustrious mouthpiece. The end of the Rebellion furnished the occasion for their propaganda.