commission to hold an investigation into the transaction in question.
When the lieutenant-governor was in possession of the evidence taken
before this commission, he came to the conclusion that it was his duty
to relieve Mr. Mercier and his colleagues of their functions as
ministers "in order to protect the dignity of the crown and safeguard
the honour and interest of the province in danger." Mr. de Boucherville
was then called upon to form a ministry which would necessarily assume
full responsibility for the action of the lieutenant-governor under the
circumstances, and after some delay the new ministry went to the country
and were sustained by a large majority. It is an interesting coincidence
that the lieutenant-governor who dismissed the Mercier government and
the prime minister who assumed full responsibility for the dismissal of
the Mercier administration, were respectively attorney-general and
premier in the cabinet who so deeply resented a similar action in 1878.
But Mr. Letellier was then dead--notoriously as a result of the mental
strain to which he had been subject in the constitutional crisis which
wrecked his political career--and it was left only for his friends to
feel that the whirligig of time brings its revenge even in political
affairs[5].

[5: Since this chapter was in type, the Dominion government have found
it necessary to dismiss Mr. McInnes from the lieutenant-governorship of
British Columbia, on the ground--as set forth in an order-in-council
--that "his official conduct had been subversive of the principles of
responsible government," and that his "usefulness was gone." While Mr.
McInnes acted as head of the executive at Victoria, the political
affairs of the province became chaotic. He dismissed ministries in the
most summary manner. When the people were at last appealed to at a
general election by Mr. Martin, his latest adviser, he was defeated by
an overwhelming majority, and the Ottawa government came to the