It appears to me, I must confess, that if you have a republican form of government in a great country, with complicated internal and external relations, you must either separate the executive and legislative departments, as in the United States, or submit to a tyranny of the majority, not the more tolerable because it is capricious and wielded by a tyrant with many heads. Of the two evils I prefer the former. Consider, for a moment, how much more violent the proceedings of majorities in the American Legislatures would be, how much more reckless the appeals to popular passion, how much more frequently the permanent interests of the nation and the rights of individuals and classes would be sacrificed to the object of raising political capital for present uses, if debates or discussions affected the tenure of office. I have no idea that the executive and legislative departments of the State can be made to work together with a sufficient degree of harmony to give the maximum of strength and of mutual independence to secure freedom and the rights of minorities, except under the presidency of Monarchy, the moral influence of which, so long as a nation is monarchical in its sentiments, cannot, of course, be measured merely by its recognised power. [Sidenote: Influence of a Governor, under responsible Government.] Those who are most ready to concur in these views of Colonial Government, and to admire the vigour with which they were defended, and the consistency with which they were carried out, may still be inclined to ask whether the maintenance of them did not involve a species of official suicide: whether the theory of the responsibility of provincial Ministers to the provincial Parliament, and of the consequent duty of the Governor to remain absolutely neutral in the strife of political parties, had not a necessary tendency to degrade his office into that of a mere _Roi fainéant_. He had in 1849, as Sir C. Adderley expresses it, 'maintained the principle of responsible Government at the risk of his life.' Was the result of his hard-won victory only to empty himself of all but the mere outward show of power and authority?