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‘Moreover, his Most Christian Majesty cedes and guarantees to his said Britannick Majesty, in full right, Canada, with all its dependencies.’ This brief statement from the Treaty of Paris is the index to the character of subsequent Canadian constitutions. The constitution of Canada was to be British. The functions of the various offices of government, their relations each to the other and to the body of the governed were to be determined in the light of the constitution of England.

But it was after the model of the English constitution of the eighteenth century—that which aroused the admiration and veneration of Burke and which George III exalted to the dignity of ‘the most perfect of human formations’—that the first British constitution of Canada was fashioned. The cabinet so brilliantly portrayed on the pages of Bagehot had not yet come into existence. No reform bills had infected the earlier parliaments of George iii with the baneful evils of democracy. In its application to the eighteenth century the sovereignty of parliament, which Professor Dicey regards as the first principle of the constitution, differs distinctly from its modern application. To the average eighteenth-century observer the separation of the executive, legislative and judicial functions would have appealed as the supreme virtue of the British constitution. However, the determination of George to follow his mother’s advice and to ‘be King’ was a most pertinent fact in Canadian government. The actual supremacy of the crown was the condition which, above all others, determined the character of the first British constitution of Canada. The constitution of England was capable of development and did in fact undergo a most important transformation during the period here considered. The character of these changes in no small degree gave direction to the development which circumstances wrought in the constitution of Canada.

But the Canadian constitution could not be wholly British. The foundation on which the British structure was to be reared had been prepared by his Most Christian Majesty of France. The civil relations of the vast majority of the people to whom the constitution was to apply were already regulated by French law. Their attitude towards government, their capacity for enjoying constitutional liberties, their ability to perform constitutional duties were determined by their relations with a French colonial government. The principles of the British constitution were introduced into an atmosphere to which they were alien, and the course of Canadian government is at all points modified by the contact and, at times, the conflict of laws, traditions and customs essentially diverse in character.

Likewise, the position of Canada as a colony of the British crown determined in a more particular manner the character of its constitution. Dependence is the essential characteristic of a colonial government; supreme constitutional authority became vested in an office located beyond the confines of the colony. In this respect the constitutions of Canada and the New England colonies were similar, yet they differed in their origin in that the Canadian constitution, as the result of the cession, was imported ready-made, while the New England constitutions were, to a large extent, the product of colonial conditions. The manner in which this extra-colonial sovereignty manifested itself is a most important factor in the growth of the Canadian constitution, and at no time is its significance greater than in the earlier period of its history. The constitution with which we have to deal is therefore British, grafted on the stem of a French-Canadian dependency.