attempt to meet parliament as the head of a government. Before his
retirement from office, immediately after his defeat at the elections,
he had some difference of opinion with the governor-general, the Earl of
Aberdeen, who refused, in the exercise of his discretionary power, to
sanction certain appointments to the senate and the judicial bench,
which the prime minister justified by reference to English and Canadian
precedents under similar conditions--notably of 1878 when Mr. Mackenzie
resigned. Soon after the general election, and Lord Dufferin was
governor-general, Sir Charles Tupper considered the subject of
sufficient constitutional importance to bring it before the house of
commons, where Sir Wilfrid Laurier, then premier, defended the course of
the governor-general. The secretary of state for the colonies also
approved in general terms of the principles which, as the
governor-general explained in his despatches, had governed his action in
this delicate matter.

On Sir Charles Tapper's defeat at the elections, Mr. Laurier became
first minister of a Liberal administration, in which positions were
given to Sir Oliver Mowat, so long premier of Ontario, to Mr. Blair,
premier of New Brunswick, to Mr. Fielding, premier of Nova Scotia, and
eventually to Mr. Sifton, the astute attorney-general of Manitoba. Sir
Richard Cartwright and Sir Louis Davies--to give the latter the title
conferred on him in the Diamond Jubilee year--both of whom had been in
the foremost rank of the Liberal party for many years, also took office
in the new administration; but Mr. Mills, versed above most Canadian
public men in political and constitutional knowledge, was not brought in
until some time later, when Sir Oliver Mowat, the veteran minister of
justice, was appointed to the lieutenant-governorship of Ontario. A
notable acquisition was Mr. Tarte, who had acquired much influence in
French Canada by his irrepressible energy, and who was placed over the