respects without parallel in Canadian parliamentary history.  There was a practice, now obsolete in Canada as in England, for the speaker, on presenting the supply or appropriation bill to the governor-general for the royal assent, to deliver a short address directing attention to the principal measures passed during the session about to be closed.[14] This practice grew up in days when there were no responsible ministers who would be the only constitutional channel of communication between the Crown and the assembly.  The speaker was privileged, and could be instructed as “the mouth-piece” of the House, to lay before the representative of the Sovereign an expression of 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 discordant elements, only temporarily brought together by the hope of breaking up the government.  In the next place it felt that it could not be justified by sound constitutional usage in asking a parliament in which the people were now imperfectly represented, to settle definitely such important questions as the clergy reserves and the seigniorial tenure.  Lord Elgin had himself