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Table of Contents

The history of the Canadian constitution is derived from many sources. Its letters of adoption into the British family are found in an international treaty. The cession gave to the king in council the right to determine the character of the government of the colony. Its original constitution is therefore contained in a proclamation of the king and a commission under the sign manual. When the prerogative had once been exercised and a representative legislature granted, supreme legislative authority was transferred to the parliament of Great Britain. The statutes of the imperial parliament thus become an important source of the written constitution. Orders-in-council, commissions, proclamations issued under the authority of imperial statutes, proclamations of the governor, ordinances and statutes of the colonial legislature, contribute to complete the scheme of government. These legislative enactments as interpreted by the courts, and with the common law as a general background, compose the law of the Canadian constitution. But in addition there has grown up a mass of convention surrounding the exercise of the prerogative of the crown and the privileges of parliament. The influence of British practice has entered largely into the determination of the custom of the constitution. The expression of these conventions, and the discussion of the transformations which constitute their growth, must be sought in the records of the legislative and executive bodies and in the correspondence of the officials of the colony. From these various written sources the history of the constitution may be gleaned.

In the following pages the constitutions of 1763 and 1791 have been taken as marking the beginnings of distinct periods in the history of the constitution. With these as a basis an attempt has been made to trace the development in the exercise of sovereign power by the various branches of government. This survey has been made to include the two periods which may be considered constitutionally abnormal, the one prior to the establishment of civil government in 1763, and the other following the suspension of the constitution in 1837 and resulting in the union of the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada in 1841.