Series consists of minute books (commonly referred to as the "State Books") of the Executive Council which record that body's deliberations concerning state business during the period 1841-1867. The records in this series include: the minute books themselves (vols. 61-64, 66 and 68-93); appendices (vols. 60 and 67) to certain individual minute books (State Books B to E), which contain reports and other documents read in Council; and both draft and comprehensive indexes (vols. 58-59, 65 and 94-104). Minute books contain an alphabetical nominal/subject index and/or a table of contents, the entries in which reflect contemporary indexing concepts. Minutes of committees and sub-committees appointed by the Council to investigate in detail aspects of state business were often incorporated, as reports, into the State Books. In the case of the committee appointed to audit public accounts, however, this was not the practice. The Executive Council of the Province of Canada evidently adopted the practice followed since 1826 in Lower Canada and kept separate minute books (see vols. 1-3 of the Submissions to the Executive Council relating to the Audit of Provincial Public Accounts series, elsewhere within this fonds) to record its deliberations and decisions on that particular sub-set of state business that was the auditing of the public accounts.
Separate sets of minute books were also maintained to record the deliberations of the Executive Council concerning its land business. The evidence does not suggest that the Executive Council met in separate meetings for its state and land work but, rather, that two separate agendas were presented at each meeting at which there were both state and land matters to be discussed. The proceedings and decisions were then recorded in different minute books. The line of distinction between "state" and "land" issues was not always clearly maintained in the two sets of minutes. Matters relating to particular land grants, leases and associated topics were documented in the land minute books. Land-related issues of a broad or policy nature, on the other hand, were generally considered to be "state" matters and are found documented in the state minute books. As a result, one finds records of land-granting policy, of the acquisition and distribution of Indian lands, of military reserves (Ordnance lands transferred to civil control), and similar topics documented in the state minute books.