FEDERALISM—TRUE AND FALSE.
[To TILE EDITOR OF TES " lirzerAton.".1 SIR,—May I suggest a correction as to fact in your excellent article on this subject ? You say, "The Federal Government of the United States of America was created by the binding together of the separate States which had previously been separate colonies of Great Britain." This, of course, is quite true, but you add : "In the same way the Federal Government of the Dominion of Canada was created in 1867 by binding together separate colonies." This is not so correct, because the Constitution of 1867 divided into two provinces, with distinct executives and legislatures, Quebec and Ontario, which, as Lower and Upper Canada, had been welded into a single colony twenty-seven years earlier by the Constitution which followed Lord Durham's report. These two provinces, together with the two previously separate maritime colonies, were the units which formed the Dominion Federation in 1867. The process combined division with addition. In my opinion, if we must depart from the existing Constitution of the United Kingdom, the Canadian model of 1867 should be followed in all respects as closely as possible. This was Mr. Chamberlain's view in 1886. It is not, however, the lino taken by the measure proposed by the present Government, which appears to be a new hopeless hybrid begotten by the idea of full colonial self-government out of the idea of
Federal Union.—I am, Sir, Stc., BERNARD HOLLAND.
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