I GO WITH MATTHEWS HERE FLAWED THOUGH HIS VIEW IS TOO

"...Lastly, Matthews argues, had we simply become a Dominion like the other settler states of the British Empire, we, like they, would have had a parliamentary system like theirs, which would have functioned more effectively.  It is, again, difficult to test this proposition without knowing exactly how big he imagines the North American dominion to have been.  He argues that it can be much easier to pass legislation under a Parliamentary system--but what is happening in Britain today shows that that is only true when the governing party really has a strong consensus on policy within itself.  He also argues that monarchs, or their representatives the governors general in the British dominions, have played a big role in avoiding political crises in ways which an American President cannot.  What he ignores, of course, is the enormous boost the American Revolution, the Civil War, and the Second World War gave to American ideas of democracy around the world, beginning with the British Empire, where both the Second Reform Act and the British North America Act of 1867 (which made Canada effectively independent) were passed largely as a result of the Union victory in the Civil War...." DK