The government was in the habit of regularly submitting its accounts and estimates to the legislature, and expressed its desire eventually to grant that body the disposal of all the crown revenues, provided it would consent to vote a civil list for the king’s life, or even for a fixed number of years, but the assembly was not willing to agree to any proposal which prevented it from annually taking up the expenditures for the civil government item by item, and making them matters of yearly vote.  In this way every person in the public service would be subject to the caprice, or ill-feeling, of any single member of the legislature, and the whole administration of the public departments would probably be made ineffective.  Under the plan suggested by the government in accordance with English constitutional forms, the assembly would have every opportunity of criticising all the public expenditures, and even reducing the gross sum in cases of extravagance.  But the same contumacious spirit, which several times expelled Mr. Christie, member for Gaspe, on purely vexatious and frivolous charges, and constantly impeached judges without the least legal justification, simply to satisfy personal spite or political malice, would probably have been exhibited towards all officials had the majority in the assembly been given the right of voting each salary separately.  The assembly never once showed a disposition to meet the wishes of the government even half-way.  Whatever may have been the vacillation or blundering of officials in Downing Street, it must be admitted that the imperial government showed a conciliatory spirit throughout the whole financial controversy.  Step by step it yielded to all the demands of the assembly on this point.  In 1831, when Lord Grey was premier, the British parliament passed an act, making it lawful for the legislatures of Upper and Lower Canada to appropriate the duties raised by imperial statutes for the purpose of defraying the charges of the administration of justice and the support of civil government.  The government consequently retained only the relatively small sum arising from casual and territorial dues.  When Lord Aylmer, the governor-general, communicated this important concession to the legislature, he also sent a message setting forth the fact that it was the settled policy of the crown on no future occasion to nominate a judge either to the executive or the legislative council, the sole exception being the chief justice of Quebec.  He also gave the consent of the government to the passage of an act declaring that judges of the supreme court should thereafter hold office “during good behaviour,” on the essential condition that their salaries were made permanent by the legislature.  The position of the judiciary had long been a source of great and even just complaint, and, in the time of Sir James Craig, judges were disqualified from sitting in the assembly on the demand of that body.  They continued, however, to hold office “during the pleasure”