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Operating theories are more or less concealed in the structure of all historical writing. They are readily discerned when the theories are comprehensive and at variance with generally accepted ideas, as in the case of Thomism or Marxism. They are hard to detect when like Spencerianism they conform closely to the mores of American life. Writers may honestly deny in this latter case that they have any special theory; they are simply recording the "facts" from a "common-sense" viewpoint. But since theory must be either implicit or explicit, it is better for scholarly purposes that it should be explicit. Carefully formulated theory restricts unconscious bias, gives meaning to otherwise formless data, and is more likely to reveal unexpected relationships.

AbstractThe purpose of this new department is to discuss and prmote the public aspects of the whole utility problem; to help establish a clearer economic and technical understanding of the industries involved and bring about more definite policies and of methods of conserving the public interest. The department will be devoted to all public aspects of utility organization, operation and control. As to regulation, it will discuss principles and policies, causes of controversy, court decisions, legislative remedies, methods and machinery of control. It will constantly seek to bring out the essential facts, clarify the issues and consolidate sound public views for effective regulation. It will have no bias toward public ownership.In most of these matters. there are honest differences in point of view. The department will endeavor to give sincere consideration to all disinierested and intelligent opinion. This is the only way by which progress can be made.

"The circumstances and incidents attending the creation of the Province of Manitoba have sometimes been related in a manner tending to cause misunderstanding, prejudice, and even ill will between east and west, and between the two great races which inhabit the Dominion. A few facts out of historical perspective, a few unsupported myths, along with some unsound legal and constitutional doctrine have given an unfortunate bias to the opinions of not a few." The paragraph quoted above forms an apt introduction to the present discussion. The data herewith presented, and the deductions drawn therefrom, will, it is hoped, tend to modify certain "erroneous ideas", namely: that the disturbances at Red River were a rebellion; that the shooting of Thomas Scott was a murder, not an execution; that the Hudson's Bay Company and the Roman Catholic Church were disinterested onlookers. As a background for the proper understanding of the events connected with the insurrection, a brief description of the population and government of the district of Assiniboia has been found necessary.

Let us transport ourselves for a moment on the magic carpet of fancy to the year 1783 that saw the formal close of the war for independence, and listen to a few passages from an imaginary lecture delivered by a prescient professor of moral and natural philosophy in an unnamed American college to a group of boys preparing themselves for labor, achievement, and destiny in the republic so recently ushered into a chilly and doubting world."Young gentlemen: You who hear my voice, if you cross the normal span of life, will be living when the first quarter of the nineteenth century has turned. Those among you who are blessed with the four score years of the Scriptures will approach the borders of the mid-century before the long night falls upon your path. Your children, who will learn their early lessons and derive their bias from your instruction, will be among the citizens who govern the country in 1850, and your grandchildren will face with dimming eyes the dawn of the twentieth century. These facts, we might say, to anticipate the language of a coming philosopher in this ancient college, are 'stubborn and irreducible.'

"We are under a Constitution," said Charles Evans Hughes when he was governor of New York, "but the Constitution is what the judges say it is …" Several theories of jurisprudence have arisen which attempt to take into account this personal element in the judicial interpretation and making of law. The so-called "realistic" school has argued that law is simply the behavior of the judge, that law is secreted by judges as pearls are secreted by oysters. A less extreme position was taken by the late Justice Holmes, who said: "What I mean by law is nothing more or less than the prediction of what a court will do." While these views go rather far in eliminating any idea of law as a "normative, conceptual system of rules," no one doubts that many judicial determinations are made on some basis other than the application of settled rules to the facts, or that justices of the United States Supreme Court, in deciding controversial cases involving important issues of public policy, are influenced by biases and philosophies of government, by "inarticulate major premises," which to a large degree predetermine the position they will take on a given question. Private attitudes, in other words, become public law.

This paper is an attempt to suggest methods of approach to the materials of Canadian social history. As such it is an appeal for a greater utilization of historical data in the development of sociological principles. It should be admitted at the outset that the point of view advanced is partly the result of a bias in favour of what might be described as the documentary as opposed to the interview method of research. Certain problems can be studied only by means of the interview. There are times, however, when a greater understanding could be gained from documentary records with much less expenditure of time and energy. Furthermore, the interview method, if it is to yield fruitful results, must be employed by those with a particular aptitude for "feeling out" information in this way. It is no accident that the most successful research students in sociology very often have been those with experience in journalism or those with a flare for journalism who found an outlet for their inclinations in sociological research. The penetrating insight of a Sinclair Lewis or Sherwood Anderson cannot be matched by the finest tools forged in the laboratory of the sociologist.

In its report of 1926 the Duncan Commission found the claims of the Maritime Provinces for a larger federal subsidy so just and so urgent that it recommended an immediate increase in the form of interim payments (which were to form the minimum of any increased subsidy) and that the Dominion government should take immediate steps to secure "a complete revision", "by detailed determination and assessment", "of the financial arrangements as between them and the maritime provinces".The White Commission was accordingly appointed by the federal government in September, 1934, on the written request of the premiers of the Maritime Provinces to make this financial settlement. Sir Thomas White, as chairman, and Edward Walter Nesbitt, both of Ontario, and Chief Justice J. A. Mathieson of Charlottetown, P.E.I., were the Commission. Judge Mathieson brought in a dissenting report. Another Maritime commissioner would probably have changed materially the amount of the increase recommended, since in a report based not upon any accurate standards of measurement but upon "broad and general considerations", political opinions and personal bias are important. Probably the personnel of the White Commission was not so favourable to these provinces as was that of the Turgeon Commission to the province of Manitoba. Yet the White Commission accepted without question the recommendations of the Duncan Commission and the Maritime Provinces were allowed to present their case before the Duncan Commission without any contesting case of the federal government.