or Charles I.in English history.
The Council consisted of fifteen members, viz.: the Governor-in-Chief Simpson, the Local Governor Christie, the Roman Catholic Bishop, two Church of England clergymen, three retired Hudson's Bay Company officers, the leading doctor of the Colony, Sheriff Ross, Coroner McCallum, and three leading business men, viz.: Pritchard, Logan and McDermott.

It is noticeable that though the French element numbered about one-half of the people, that only one Councillor besides the Bishop was given them, and this was Cuthbert Grant, now settled down from the period of his Bois-brules impulsiveness to be the Warden of the Plains, with an influence over the Metis, that can only be described as magical.
Judged by the methods of representative government the Council was rather a burlesque.
Sheriff Alexander Ross, though a member of the Council, says: "To guard against foolish and oppressive acts, the sooner the people have a share in their own affairs the better.

It is only fair that those that have to obey the laws should have a voice in making them." Hon.

Donald Gunn, who was not on the Council, says: "The majority of the Council thus appointed were, no doubt, the wealthiest men in the Colony and generally well-informed, and yet their appointment was far from being acceptable to the people who knew that they were either sinecurists or salaried servants of the Hudson's Bay Company, and consequently were not the fittest men to legislate for people who retained some faint recollection of the manner in which the popular branch of the legislature in their native land was appointed, and who never ceased to inveigh against the arbitrary manner in which the Governor-in-chief chose the legislators." Notwithstanding the writer's perfect sympathy with both of these opinions, it is but fair to state that the Council of Assiniboia did in ordinary times do many things which were most beneficial and helpful to the Red River Community.
Its most distressing failures were in those things which are very essential.

(1) Being a compromise body it had no power of progressive development, and in the whole generation of its existence it did practically nothing to advance the public, intellectual, or moral interests of the people.