The Legislative Council, as has been said, was composed of members nominated by the Sovereign's representative. By the sixth section of the Constitutional Act provision had been made for the creation of a hereditary nobility, with the hereditary right of being summoned to the Legislative Council. Happily this authority was not exercised; otherwise, as Gourlay has remarked, "we should have seen, perhaps, the Duke of Ontario leading in a cart of hay, my Lord Erie pitching, and Sir Peter Superior making the rick; or perhaps his Grace might now have been figuring as a pettifogging lawyer, his Lordship as a pedlar, and Sir Knight, as a poor parson, starving on five thousand acres of Clergy Reserves."[31] We were spared the spectacle of such absurdities, and life members of the Legislative Council were the nearest approach to a nobility vouchsafed to us. Some of the first appointees were men of intelligence and probity, but few of those subsequently created could with any show of truthfulness be so characterized. They were for the most part dependants of the Government, with no fitness, educational or otherwise, for the discharge of grave legislative functions, and with no motive but to do the bidding of those who had clothed them with the dignity of office. All things considered, this condition of things was to be looked for; but the inevitable result followed. The few upright members either died off in the course of time, and were succeeded by sycophantic placemen, or, finding themselves outnumbered, ceased to attend the sittings of the branch of the Legislature to which they belonged. In one way and another, those who really wished to preserve the public interests were weeded out, and nothing was left but a rump devoted to the Executive will. Instead of answering the purpose for which it was originally intended, the Legislative Council became a mere instrument in the hands of the oligarchy for stemming back the tide of public opinion. Instead of forming a seasonable and wholesome check upon extravagance and inconsiderate legislation in the Lower House, it contributed to the impoverishment of the Provincial revenue by assisting to keep the control of public affairs in the hands of selfish and unprincipled men. Instead of preserving the "happy balance of our glorious Constitution"--a phrase constantly placed in the mouths of Lieutenant-Governors, and embodied in their addresses to our Canadian simulacrum of the House of Lords--it tended to keep the balance all on one side, and that side was the one most prejudicial to the public good. It became a mere stop-gap interposed by the Government between itself and the Assembly. The Assembly passed measure after measure with careful deliberation, only to find that their time had been thrown away, for upon reaching the Upper House these measures were ignominously thrust aside. One who had himself been a member of the Assembly, and who had had personal experience of the evils whereof he wrote, has left the