The papers of Sir George Arthur are important to historical research in several countries. For this reason they have been divided. The Canadian papers were considered of such importance that the Toronto Public Library Board of Trustees, assisted by the generosity of the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the University of Toronto Press, has undertaken their publication, under the editorship of the late Chief Librarian, Charles Rupert Sanderson, LL.D., M.A., B.Sc. They were first published in six paper-bound parts, and then in the present three volumes.
Volume Three continues the story of the constitutional development of the province. The inner workings of Lord Sydenham' s form of practical politics are shown clearly in the manipulating of the elections for the united House of Assembly, and in the choosing of the Executive Council. Robert Baldwin's place in that Council brought the whole question of responsible government into prominence, as Lord Durham's Report had done two years earlier. When Arthur left the province in March, 1841, Sydenham was confident that constitutional stability had at last been achieved. A disturbing feature of Arthur's last days in Canada was the repercussions of the McLeod case, and this too is discussed at length in Volume Three of the papers.