Excerpt from Canada: An Actual Democracy The Constitution of Canada was prepared by a group of colonial statesmen in 1864 and enacted in 1867, by a statute of the British Parliament. The scheme of government is Federal, a form prescribed not merely by the diversities to be found in a vast territory stretching westward from Nova Sc'otia to the Pacific, but also by the aforesaid dual char acter of the population, one-third of which inhabits Quebec, speaking French and following the Roman law established there by France when her first settlers arrived, while. In the other provinces the common law of England prevails. The Federal system roughly resembles that of the United States; framed seventy-eight years earlier, and that of Australia, framed thirty-three years later, as respects the distribution of powers between the Central or National and the Provin cial Governments, each in the main independent of the other, while the former has nevertheless, within its allotted sphere, a direct authority over all citizens, with adequate means for enforcing that authority. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.