Provincial government

“ All that is needful is to give a sufficiently large sphere of action to the local authorities. Under one and the same central government there may be local governors, and provincial assemblies for local purposes. It may happen, for instance, that the people of different provinces may have preferences in favor of different modes of taxation. ”

“ Thirdly, the executive power, which rests with the Sovereign. That is to say, the Laws and Decrees will be executed by the Ministers and Government officials in the name of His Imperial Majesty in the manner defined by law. Article 28. The three above-mentioned powers shall always be differentiated and separated from one another. Article 29. The particular revenues of each province, department, and commune shall be regulated by the Provincial and Departmental Assemblies in accordance with their own particular laws. [Articles 30-34 define the status of the members of the National Assembly.] ”

“ Under the constitution, the provinces retain all the powers not delegated to the federal government. Each province has its own constitution, which must be republican in form and in harmony with that of the nation. Each elects its governor, legislators and provincial functionaries of all classes, without the intervention of the federal government. Each has its own judicial system, and enacts laws relating to the administration of justice, the distribution and imposition of taxes, and all matters affecting the province. ”

“ We want responsible government in full measure in connection with the Provincial Branches of administration, leaving untouched the Departments under the control of the Government of India in regard to which the Congress scheme should apply. ”

“ In some countries, as in Canada, Argentine and Brazil, the provinces are really a creation of the central government; in other countries, as in the United States, Germany, and Switzerland, the federal government is the creation of the originally sovereign states. In some countries the intermediate (provincial or state) government is suffering a loss of importance as compared with the local or central governments ”

“ If the Government will not make over the whole of the provincial administration to a popular Ministry responsible to a popular Assembly, let them at least, entrust to them such departments, as Education, Sanitation, Local Self-government, Police, etc. ”

“ A provincial legislature shall have full power to control, regulate and dispose of its internal affairs and shall have all such other powers, privileges and immunities as may, subject to this Constitution, be prescribed by a law of such legislature. ”

“ Although, at present, the Central Government's authority is still weak in a number of provinces, the central authority is not, at least openly, repudiated, and there is reason to hope that, if the Central Government as such can be maintained, provincial administration, military forces and finance will acquire an increasingly national character. ”

“ In short, though a legislative body, the provincial council exercises no authority which Parliament cannot revoke. There is no separate judiciary, or police force, or civil service, nor any separate departments of general government. Moreover, harbours and railways are under the control of the Union Parliament. ”

“ Parliament or a provincial legislature shall not encroach on the powers, functions and structure of a local government to such an extent as to compromise the fundamental status, purpose and character of local government. ”

“ VIII. That the Governor and provincial Council shall, at all times, settle and order the situation of all cities, and market towns, in every county, modelling therein all public buildings, streets and market places; and shall appoint all necessary roads and highways, in this province and territories thereof.
IX. That the Governor and provincial Council shall, at all times, have power to inspect the management of the public treasury, and punish those who shall convert any part thereof to any other use, than what hath been agreed upon by the Governor, provincial Council and Assembly. ”

“ For years he pressed upon the people the need for a responsible Government, and for the introduc­tion of a parliamentary system like that of England, and he vigorously exposed the obsoleteness of the autonomous provincial system. ”

“ He forms his cabinet out of the party in majority in the elective Assembly. Each province has an elective Assembly, and most of them have two Houses, one of which is a Senate appointed for life. The provincial cabinet has a premier, who is the leader of the House, and the Opposition is represented by a recognized leader. The Government is as responsible as the Federal Government. This organization of recognized and responsible leaders greatly facilitates the despatch of public business. Affairs are brought to a direct issue ”

“ He transferred the land revenue and part of the customs revenue to the provincial councils by Act of Parliament, and since the home government had refused to allow a bill to this effect, he made arrangements by which the councils were virtually placed in control of their own land. ”

“ Act
To provide for the dissolution of provincial councils and for the administration of provincial matters by administrators and the other members of executive committees appointed by the State President; and to provide for matters connected therewith. ”

“ Of course every new province into which Congress has been allured by the principle of implied powers has required for its administration a greater or less enlargement of the national civil service, which now, through its hundred thousand officers, carries into every community of the land a sense of federal power, as the power of powers, and fixes the federal authority, as it were, in the very habits of society. ”

“ Under the new régime the central administration has radically increased its authority among the provincial rulers, and more than ever in former years has managed to maintain control over their pretentions. ”

“ When more than one half of the province shall have reached the constitutional period, that is when they have completely adopted local self-government, the People's Congress shall be convened to decide on and promulgate the Constitution. ”

“ Those who have either themselves remodelled the framework of State constitutions, or proposed schemes of political reform, seem mostly to have studied how to apportion the respective provinces which the nation, and any of its separate elements, should justly share in the administration,—to assign the due functions of each in the governmental plan,—and to adopt the precautions necessary for preserving the integrity of the several interests at stake. ”

“ Provincial Governors have also a better Chance in a Republick, to escape with their Plunder, by means of Bribery or Interest; and their Fellow-Citizens, who find their own State to be inriched by the Spoils of their Subject-Provinces, will be the more inclined to tolerate such Abuses. ”

“ That the people of this province have, moreover, the right to expect from such provincial administration the exercise of their best endeavours, that the imperial authority, within its constitutional limits, shall be exercised in the manner most consistent with their well-understood wishes and interests. ”

“ How was it possible for sixty millions of provincials to enter the narrow and rigid circle of provincial institutions?" The like holds where, instead of extension of territory, there is only increase of population. The contrast between the simple administrative system which sufficed in old English times for a million people and the complex administrative system at present needed for many millions sufficiently indicates this general truth. ”

“ French population incapable of aiding central authority.The utter want of any machinery of executive government in the Province is not, perhaps, more striking than might be observed in some of the most flourishing portions of the American continent. ”

“ In order to promote the prosperity of the provinces, there shall be in each of them a council, which shall be denominated provincial council, and which shall be presided over by the person exercising the supreme authority within the province. ”

“ Under our third division the narrower political history of our Province begins, the introduction of constitutional government—the work of the legislature, some of whose early records are lost, the outbreak of the War of 1812, the progress of settlement, and the development of municipal and commercial institutions, the restiveness leading to the rising of 1837, and the concessions made to responsible government. ”

“ If the direction of important legislation of a public character lies almost altogether in the hands of the ministers, special laws affecting private or local interests are not less completely outside of their province. ”

“ If we—the people in this Territory, or in other Territories or in the States, confer certain powers on the General Government, we no longer retain them, they are ceded away by us to others. If we give to our legislators certain authority, they hold that authority, and it is for us to submit to the laws which may be enacted by them. ”

“ The governor-general, his cabinet, and the popular branch of the legislature are governed in Canada, as in England, by a system of rules, conventions and understandings which enable them to work in harmony with one another. The Crown, the cabinet, the legislature, and the people, have respectively certain rights and powers which, when properly and constitutionally brought into operation, give strength and elasticity to our system of government. ”

“ Thus, by the terms of these "laws," the people have no control whatever over either the legislative, the executive, or the judicial departments of the territorial government until a time before which, by the natural progress of population, the territorial government will be superseded by a state government. ”

“ When an application by a Territory for Statehood is made, it is considered by Congress, and, if approved, the inhabitants of the Territory are authorized to form for themselves out of such Territory a State government, and thus prepare themselves for admission into the Union. ”

“ At the revolution in 1776, the representativs of the province, acting on the principle that public good transcends all considerations of individual right, assumed the reigns of government, formed a constitution for the purpose, and divested the proprietaries of both territory and jurisdiction. ”

“ Parliament may alter the boundaries of any province, divide a province into two or more provinces, or form a new province out of provinces within the Union, on the petition of the provincial council of every province whose boundaries are affected thereby. ”

“ But if a local government, entirely or principally, derives its immediate origin from the locality itself, it naturally tends to clash with the central authority, or with the general administration;—the tendency being greater or less as its territory is larger or smaller, as its immediate origin is more or less popular, and as its attributes are more or less extensive. ”

“ It was agreed that "the system of government best adapted under existing circumstances to protect the diversified interests of the several provinces, and secure harmony and permanency in the working of the Union, would be a general government charged with matters of common interest to the whole country ”

“ The nation at large is interested in them in no other way than that in which it is interested in the private well-being of all its individual citizens. But among the duties classed as local, or performed by local functionaries, there are many which might with equal propriety be termed national, being the share belonging to the locality of some branch of the public administration in the efficiency of which the whole nation is alike interested: the jails, for instance, most of which in this country are under county management ”