42 OUR ISLAND STORY,

to confer and which cannot fail to strengthen the ties that bind us to our common country."

Not fully assured that their eloquent appeals to the Queen and the British House of Commons Would be followed by the concession of Responsible Government to Prince Edward Island, the House of Assembly appointed a committee to send letters to “The Society for the Reform of Colonial Government” estab- lished in London. The committee addressed two letters to this Society. In these letters they reviewed the exceptional con- ditions that existed in the Island and the chief difficulties in the way to a successful issue of the movement in which the people of the Island were concerned. They concluded with an expres- sion of the hope that they had at least given such a statement of facts, corroborated by public documents, as could not fail to prove the soundness of the position assumed by the Lower House of the Legislature and the absolute necessity for the introduction of that change of government whichiit had been the duty of the House to demand.

From the Lieutenant Governor at the close of the second session in 1850, the members of the Legislative Assembly receiv- ed no thanks for their efforts to obtain Responsible Govern- ment; no encouragement in their belief that success would crown their efforts. But when the Legislature met in 1851 there was another Lieutenant Governor to deliver the Speech from the Throne. Sir Donald Campbell had, in the meantime, passed away. He was succeeded by Sir Alexander Bannerman, and the British Government had acted according to the maxim that “it is not desirable to carry on the Government of any of the British Provinces in North America in opposition to the Opinion of the inhabitants.”

At the opening of the Legislative session on the 25th of March, 1851, Lieutenant Governor Bannerman referred to the fact that at the last election a large majority of the electors expressed opin- ions favorable to the introduction of Responsible Government. Therefore he felt that he was authorized to announce that he was prepared to “introduce Responsible Government into this colony.” He also said that he was prepared to surrender the