They contributed, too, in another and less simple fashion, to the constitutional question. Nowhere so clearly as in their writings are both sides of the theoretic contradiction--British supremacy and Canadian autonomy--so boldly stated, and, in spite of the contradiction, so confidently accepted. They would trust implicitly to the sense and {247} feelings, however crude, of the colony: they would surrender the entire control of domestic affairs: they would sanction, as at home, party with all its faults, popular control of the executive, and apparently the decisive influence of that executive in advising the governor in internal affairs. Yet, in the great imperial federation of which they dreamed, they never doubted the right of the mother country to act with overmastering authority in certain crises. That right, and the unquenchable affection of exiles for the land whence they came, constituted for them "the connexion." These were the views which came to dominate political opinion in Britain, for Molesworth was right when he declared that to Buller and Wakefield, more than to any other persons, was the country indebted for sound views on colonial policy. The interest of the present inquiry lies in tracing the development of these views into something unlike, and distinctly bolder than, anything which these rash and unconventional thinkers had planned. Whatever might be the shortcomings of the Radical group, the daring of their trust in the colonists stands out in high relief against a background of conservative restriction and distrust. It was natural for the Tories to think of colonies as {248} they did. Under the leadership of North and George III. they had experienced what might well seem to them the natural consequences of the old constitutional system of colonial administration. After 1782 they were disinclined to experiment in Assemblies as free as those of Massachusetts and Connecticut had been. The reaction caused by the French Revolution deepened their distrust of popular institutions; and the war of 1812 quickened their hatred of the United States--the zone of political no less than military danger for Canada. The conquests which they made had given them a second colonial empire, and they had administered that empire with financial generosity and constitutional parsimony, hoping against hope that a fabric so unexpected and difficult as colonial empire might after all disappoint their fears by remaining true to Britain. Developing in spite of themselves, and with the times, they had still learned little and forgotten little. So it was that Sir George Arthur, a Tory governor _in partibus infidelium_, was driven into panic by Durham's frank criticisms, and expounded to Normanby, his Whig chief, fears not altogether baseless: "The bait of responsible government has been eagerly taken, and its poison is working most mischievously.... {249} The measure recommended by such high authority