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In The Canadian Federalist Experiment Frederick Vaughan details how the fathers of Confederation, defiantly determined to perpetuate monarchical government despite Enlightenment philosophy that insisted that republicanism was the only legitimate form of government, embraced the Hobbesean principles of the English constitution and embedded them in the new Canadian constitution in 1867, leading to concentration of power in the office of the prime minister.

"Viscount Richard Burdon Haldane was a philosopher, lawyer, British MP, and member of the British Cabinet during the First World War. He is best known to Canadians as a judge of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (Canada's highest court of appeal until 1949), in which role he was extremely influential in altering the constitutional relations between the federal parliament and the provincial legislatures

"The Canadian Federalist Experiment details how the fathers of Canadian Confederation, eager to perpetuate monarchical government despite Enlightenment thinkers' views that republicanism was the only legitimate form of government, embraced the Hobbesean principles of the English constitution. Monarchical principles were embedded in the Canadian constitution of 1867, leading to concentration of power in the office of the prime minister. Frederick Vaughan looks at changes that have taken place in Canada since 1867, arguing that Pierre Trudeau's 1982 Constitution Act quietly undermined the monarchic character of the constitution by introducing republican principles of government, leaving Canada clinging to the wreckage of the old aristocratic order while attempting to provide a new order founded on republican equality."--Jacket.