opinion on urgent questions of the day. On this occasion Mr. Macdonald
was influenced entirely by personal spite, and made an unwarrantable
use of an old custom which was never intended, and could not be
constitutionally used, to insult the representative of the Crown, even
by inference. Mr. Macdonald was not even correct in his interpretation
of the constitution, when he positively declared that an act was
necessary to constitute a session. The Crown makes a session by
summoning and opening parliament, and it is always a royal prerogative
to prorogue or dissolve it at its pleasure even before a single act
has passed the two Houses. Such a scene could never have occurred with
the better understanding of the duties of the speaker and of the
responsibilities of ministers advising the Crown that has grown up
under a more thorough study of the practice and usages of parliament,
and of the principles of responsible government. This little political
episode is now chiefly interesting as giving an insight into one phase
of the character of a public man, who afterwards won a high position
in the parliamentary and political life of Canada before and after the
confederation of 1867, not by the display of a high order of
statesmanship, but by the exercise of his tenacity of purpose, and by
reason of his reputation for a spiteful disposition which made him
feared by friend and foe.

Immediately after the prorogation, parliament was dissolved and the
Hincks-Morin ministry presented itself to the people, who were now
called upon to elect a larger number of representatives under the act
passed in 1853. Of the constitutionality of the course pursued by the
government in this political crisis, there can now be no doubt. In the
first place it was fully entitled to demand a public judgment on its
general policy, especially in view of the fact, within the knowledge
of all persons, that the opposition in the assembly was composed of