The situation was one peculiarly susceptible to {238} the treatment likely to be proposed by these radical and unconventional spirits. It was difficult to describe the constitutional position of Canada without establishing a contradiction in terms, and neither abstract and logical minds like that of Cornewall Lewis, nor bureaucratic intelligences like Stephen's, could do more than intensify the difficulty and emphasize it. The _deus ex machina_ must appear and solve the preliminary or theoretic difficulties by overriding them. There are some who describe the pioneers of Canadian self-government as philosophic radicals; but they were really not of that school. It was through the absence of any philosophy or rigid logic that they succeeded. Foremost in the group came Edward Gibbon Wakefield, one of those erratic but creative spirits whose errors are often as profitable to all (save themselves) as their sober acts. It is not here necessary to enter on the details of his emigration system; in that he was, after all, a pioneer in the south and east rather than in the west. But in the stirring years of colonial development, in which Canada, Australia, and New Zealand took their modern form, Wakefield was a leader in constitutional as well as in economic matters, and Canada was favoured not only with his opinions, but with {239} his presence. In the _Art of Colonization_ he entered into some detail on these matters. There was a certain breezy informality about his views, which carried him directly to the heart of the matter. He understood, as few of his contemporaries did, that in all discussions concerning the "connexion," the final argument was sentimental rather than constitutional; and he accepted without further argument the incapacity of Englishmen for being other than English in the politics of their colony. "There would still be hostile parties in a colony," he wrote as he planned reforms, "yes, parties instead of factions: for every colony would have its 'ins' and 'outs,' and would be governed as we are--as every free community must be in the present state of the human mind--by the emulation and rivalries, the bidding against each other for public favour, of the party in power and the party in opposition. Government by party, with all its passions and corruptions, is the price that a free country pays for freedom. But the colonies would be free communities: their internal differences, their very blunders, and their methods of correcting them, would be all their own; and the colonists who possessed capacity for public business would govern in turns far better on the whole than {240} it would be possible for any other set of beings on earth to govern that particular community."[9] He was, then, for a most entire and whole-hearted control by colonists, and especially Canadians, of their own affairs. But when he came to define what these affairs included, he had limits to suggest, and although he