The Fight for Responsible Government Would Really Be a Contest between the Governor General and Canadian Politicians over Who Should Get to Dish out Patronage

When Macdonald first entered the legislature, though, relatively little patronage was available for politicians to distribute. Purity wasn't the cause: impotence was. In the early 1840s, patronage was allocated almost entirely by the governor general. The fight through the decade for Responsible Government, or for the transfer from London to Canadians of responsibility over almost all internal or domestic matters, would really be a contest between the governor general and Canadian politicians over who should get to dish out patronage. . . .

One key example would be the role of political patronage in Canadian politics. Except on rare occasions, our two mainstream parties have either no ideology at all or only fragments of it. Their distinguishing difference is not in their titles, Liberal and Conservative, but in the fact that, at any one time, one party is in and the other is out. Without patronage, it would be just about impossible for either organization to function as a national party. . . . the prospect of good, high-status jobs matters as critically--in effect, no patronage, no national political parties.

--Richard Gwyn, John A: The Man Who Made Us; The Life and Times of John A. Macdonald, 1815-1867 (Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2008), 69, 90.