The other was the union of the
two provinces, which, it was hoped, would give the British a majority
over the French. This recommendation, which ultimately proved
unworkable, was carried out at once; the other, which has been the
saving of the empire, was left for Lord Elgin to elaborate. He made it
a principle to choose as ministers only those politicians who possessed
the confidence of the popular assembly, and his example, followed by
his successors, crystallized into a fundamental maxim of British
colonial government. It was extended to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick
in 1848, and to Newfoundland (which had in 1832 received a legislative
assembly) in 1855.
To Lord John Russell, who was prime minister from 1846 to 1851, to his
colonial secretary, the third Earl Grey, and to Lords Aberdeen and
Palmerston, who succeeded as premiers in 1852 and 1855, belongs the
credit of having conferred full rights of self-government on most of
the empire's oversea dominions. Australia, where the discovery of gold
in 1851 added enormously to her population, soon followed in Canada's
wake, and by 1856 every Australian colony, with the exception of
Western Australia, had, with the consent of the Imperial parliament,
worked out a constitution for itself, comprising two legislative
chambers and a responsible cabinet. New Zealand, which had begun to be
sparsely settled between 1820 and 1840, and had been annexed in the
latter year, received in 1852 from the Imperial parliament a
Constitution Act, which left it to Sir George Grey, the Governor, to
work out in practice the responsibility of ministers to the
legislature.
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